


wouldn't it be good

by jugheadjones



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Egg Babies, Gen, High School, Hijinks, Odd Couples, just for fun..., marriage project, parentdale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-27
Updated: 2020-03-25
Packaged: 2021-02-28 02:56:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 24,822
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22916599
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jugheadjones/pseuds/jugheadjones
Summary: “I don’t want to hear any more talk about divorces. You’ve all been married-'' Mr. Kandinsky checks his watch. “All of five minutes. If you want to be successful in this project, you have to figure out a way to be successful with your partners. And if you can’t, I have no trouble going back to the textbooks."or, the sophomore class of riverdale high is paired up for a marriage project, with typical results
Relationships: Alice Cooper & Hiram Lodge, Fred Andrews/Mary Andrews, Hal Cooper & Hermione Lodge, Penelope Blossom & FP Jones II, Tom Keller/Sierra McCoy
Comments: 42
Kudos: 31





	1. DAY ONE

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bewareoftrips](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bewareoftrips/gifts), [penelopeblossom](https://archiveofourown.org/users/penelopeblossom/gifts), [bisexualfpjones](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bisexualfpjones/gifts).



> title from nik kershaw and credits to briana for writing the fic that reminded me to finally write this one. hers will be much better and more satisfying im just goofin.

“No!” Mr. Kandinsky shouts over the noise of the cluster of angry students crowding his desk. “No, no, absolutely not! No divorces!” 

“But it’s not fair!” Mary Moore explodes in protest. “You’ve given us partners we can’t possibly be expected to work with! Divorce is within the acceptable proceedings of the law, and I am  _ demanding  _ one!” 

“Aren’t arranged marriages illegal?” Melinda Chan pipes up. “This assignment is flawed if it can’t mimic the experience of real life.” 

Hermione Gomez is almost hysterical. “You can’t possibly expect me to marry Hal Cooper!” She declares, pushing her way to the front of the pack and tossing her glossy black hair. She pronounces the name like it’s the most ridiculous thing she’s ever heard. “Me!  _ Hal Cooper _ !” 

“I feel sorrier for Hal than you!” Alice Smith shoots back hot-headedly, glaring at the girl beside her before turning to appeal to the teacher. “Mr. Kandinsky, let us switch partners, please. We have a good reason. You can’t seriously force Hal to be paired with-” 

“STUDENTS!” Kandinsky rarely raises his voice to a bellow, but he does so now. The scores of unhappy tenth-graders fall momentarily silent. Their health teacher takes a deep breath, rubbing at the skin between his eyes before looking up at the group.

“I don’t want to hear any more talk about divorces. You’ve all been married-'' Mr. Kandinsky checks his watch. “All of five minutes. If you want to be successful in this project, you have to figure out a way to be successful with your partners. And if you can’t, I have no trouble going back to the textbooks. The fact that we’re doing this interdisciplinary project is a  _ privilege.”  _

This silences a few of the protestors - their last two months of classes had been devoted to learning the names and symptoms of every sexually transmitted disease under the sun, and no one was eager to return to gazing at curriculum-mandates pictures of genital warts. Hiram in particular looks subtly swayed - Fred Andrews had somehow lumped him with the nickname  _ Chlamydia  _ in their first class on the topic, and he had been trying to live it down ever since. 

Mary is less convinced. “Mr. Kandinsky,” she appeals to him urgently, ignoring a very put-out looking Fred Andrews - the partner in question - at her side, “This is a special case. I have the utmost respect for the project, but I can’t be expected to perform at my best if-”

“The other option, Mary, is to accept a zero,” Kandinsky replies calmly. Mary falls silent at last, her cheeks pink.

Penelope stands at the very back of the group, her eyes trained on the ground. She hadn’t been willing to ask for a divorce, but had secretly been hoping that everyone else’s protests would shake up the proceedings. 

For the next two weeks, the sophomore class was to embark on an interdisciplinary parenting project that involved being paired with a pretend “spouse.” Each couple would be forced to make a budget and take care of a baby - one of many pink-or-blue stickered eggs sitting in a basket on the corner of Kandinsky’s desk. Penelope had been hoping to be paired with Hal, her only male friend, and the boy she’d had a crush on forever. She’d gladly switch with Mary, even - Fred Andrews was intimidatingly popular, but at least he was cute and nice. She might be a social outcast herself, but Fred would at least appreciate the brains she brought to the table. 

But no. 

Penelope glances out of the side of her glasses at her own partner. He’s leaning up against a desk, chewing away on the end of a pencil and gazing in a too-cool-for-this sort of way at the clock. FP Jones, big man on campus and class football star. What a nightmare. How could she possibly be expected to work with the most popular of the popular kids? What could they possibly have in common? 

“I expect you all to work very hard and make this project a success,” Mr. Kandinsky announces. “I think these unusual partnerships will give you a lot of opportunities to learn and grow.” 

“What a stupid project,” interrupts Marty Mantle. Kandinsky gives him the evil eye. 

“I’m glad you’re looking forward to it, Mr. Mantle, I developed it myself. Now, if I've settled all your questions and complaints, back to your desks, please. You have a lot of work to do.” 

Penelope’s heart sinks down to her shoes. She’s not the only one. Mary, standing next to Fred, looks thunderstruck. Alice, who had the misfortune to be paired with Hiram, is fuming. And it’s hard to tell whose face is redder: Hermione’s or Hal’s. Of the entire class, only Sierra Samuels and Tom Keller look happy. 

“Oh, and there’s one more thing,” Kandinsky adds, with a slightly  ironic smile. “This project will be worth thirty percent of your final grade.” 

* * *

Thirty percent! 

Mary feels like she’s trapped in a nightmare. This is like those dreams where you show up to school naked, or forget every single answer to the exam that you so diligently studied for. Only worse. 

She glances over at Fred, who’s engrossed in his notebook. Or, more specifically, engrossed in drawing space aliens up and down the margin of every page. 

“Pay attention!” she hisses at him, and smacks the side of his desk. Mary had known Fred since they were both little kids - and she hadn’t got along with him then, either. Somehow this year he’d come out on top of some genetic lottery that allowed him to both look cute and excel at baseball, which had sent every other girl in their year into a hysterical frenzy. Even Mary’s best friend, Hermione, had been affected - she had been ping-ponging between dating Fred and dating rich boy Hiram all year. Mary, as usual, remained the only one with any sense. 

“Mary and Fred!” Mr. Kandinsky speaks up. Until then he’d been writing out a list of parenting responsibilities on the board, but had clearly been roused by the sound of their voices. Mary looks worriedly up at him - being called out in class was almost tantamount with being yelled at. However, Mr. Kandinsky smiles. 

“Would you like to be the first to come up and get your baby?” 

“Yes, please!” Fred answers eagerly, his voice drowned out by laughter and wolf-whistles from the rest of the class. Mary fumes as she follows him up to the front of the room. 

Mr. Kandinsky places an egg with a blue sticker in Fred’s hand. “What will you be naming him?” 

“Bruce,” Fred replies immediately. Mr. Kandinsky shakes his head as Mary opens her mouth to protest. 

“I was asking both of you. Always consult with your spouse if you want a happy marriage.” 

Fred turns to Mary, rephrasing it like a question. “Bruce?” 

Mary narrows her eyes at him. “I am  _ not _ raising a baby named after Bruce Springsteen.” 

“Well, what do you want to name him?” Fred asks diplomatically. 

“I like Bartholomew,” Mary replies. Fred wrinkles his nose. 

“I like Rover.” 

“Rover! That’s a dog’s name!” 

Fred shrugs as the class hoots with laughter. “I want a dog.” 

“I already have a dog for a husband!” Mary retorts before she can stop herself. The class laughs even harder. 

“Mary, Fred… Please…” Mr. Kandinsky looks longingly at his watch. “Your time is up. Please name the baby.” 

Mary glares at Fred. Just this morning he’d almost run her off her feet on a skateboard on the way to class. Now he was making her the laughingstock of the second period. 

“Bartholomew,” she says firmly. 

“Bruce,” Fred replies. 

“Bartholomew!” 

“Bruce!” 

Mr. Kandinsky shakes his head. “If you can’t agree, you’ll lose marks.” 

Mary grits her teeth angrily. “Bruce,” she finally concedes. “Bruce Bartholomew,” she adds quickly, before Fred can look too smug about it. 

Mr. Kandinsky sighs. “Very original. As homework, I’ll ask you both to make a bassinet to carry young Bruce around in, so he doesn’t get hurt. Every couple who is unable to return an intact egg at the end of the project will lose five points off their final grade. You may now take your seats.” 

Fred laughs out loud, making eye contact with FP in the back row, and Mary turns around, her eyes narrowed. 

“Wipe that look off your face!” she hisses under her breath. 

“What look?” Fred gives her his most innocent expression. But as Mary files back to her seat he leans down and whispers in her ear. 

“Bruce…” 

Mary turns around and smacks him in the arm with all her strength. Fred’s feet slide out from under him with the force of the blow, and to Mary’s horror, the egg starts plummeting toward the tile floor. 

“No!” she yells, but it’s too late. The egg explodes with a hard splat, shooting egg yolk and bits of white shell all over the ground. 

“Aw…” Fred bends down and inspects the shattered egg. “Mary, you killed our baby.” 

The class is in hysterics. Mr. Kandinsky has to hammer on the face of his desk several times to restore order. 

“Mary, Fred, please come back up here.” He hands another egg to Fred, adorned with a pink sticker. “I don’t even dare ask you to name this one. Please take your seats.” 

“Bruce the second,” Fred whispers across the desk at her as they sit down. 

Mary buries her face in her hands and tries to hold back a scream. 

* * *

“I’m naming our baby,” Hermione whispers to Hal as Fred and Mary take their seats. Hal, rather than agreeing as she’d hoped, raises an eyebrow. 

“What are you naming it?” 

Hermione tosses her hair. “Veronica for a girl, and Leonardo for a boy.” 

“I’m not naming a baby after Leonardo DiCaprio.” 

“It’s after the painter, you dolt,” Hermione lies, narrowing her eyes at him. “It’s  _ elegant.”  _

Up in front of the class, Mr. Kandinsky had asked Hiram and Alice if they were planning on enrolling their son in preschool. Hiram was boasting about the private, uniformed preschool he had his eye on. Alice looks like she’s sucked on a lemon. 

Hermione watches with some jealousy. Sure, she was preferring Fred these days, but he and Mary’s fiasco had made it pretty clear he couldn’t be trusted with this project. Hiram had the lifestyle she’d want her kids to have. 

Hal also looks longing - but his gaze is trained on Alice. Hermione had no doubt he was imagining himself married to her, with eight little monsters in pastel cardigans and polo shirts running around somewhere. 

“Don’t get your hopes up,” she whispers offhandedly to him as she uncaps her lip gloss. “Snakes don’t shed their skins.” 

Hal looks at her incredulously. “Snakes definitely shed their…. Hermione, are you all right?” 

Hermione flushes and busies herself with fixing her eyebrows in her compact mirror. Stupid Hal. Of all the boys in the school she had to get paired with the one who couldn’t be twisted around her finger. 

“You know what I meant,” she replies. 

“Hermione, Hal.” Mr. Kandinsky, already looking like he’s regretting this project, is shooing Hiram back to his seat. “Your turn.” 

* * *

“Sunny side up, please.” FP jokes as he reaches the front of the class, causing the back left corner of the room to laugh appreciatively. At Riverdale, the back row of every class was ultimately divided into popular jocks, loners, and stoners. The jocks, at least, found FP amusing. 

“Very funny.” Kandinsky hands Penelope a pink-stickered egg, and she cradles it carefully in her hands. She’s still too shy to look at her partner. God only knew what FP thought of her. Then again, if he was like any of the other popular kids, he probably never thought about her at all. 

Maybe it would be like every other project when she had the misfortune to be paired with someone cooler than her - she’d do all the work, and they’d never have to communicate. She glances at Sierra, who’s sitting proudly next to Tom with their egg. The last group project Penelope had done had been with Sierra, and she’d offered to do all the work herself. But Sierra had insisted that they split the load, and she’d done a wonderful job. Penelope had wished to work with her again ever since. But she supposes this was one case where that wouldn’t be allowed. 

“Penelope. FP. What’s your baby’s name?” Kandinsky prompts. 

“Scrambled,” FP replies, and the class laughs appreciatively. Penelope purses her lips. Social hierarchy or not, she couldn’t let herself be stuck raising an egg named  _ Scrambled.  _

“I was thinking Ophelia,” she speaks up pointedly. “Because she’s a girl.” 

FP shrugs like he could care less, his eyes shifting over to Fred and Mary, and then the door. “Whatever.” 

Mr. Kandinsky smiles at her. “Very nice. You two may sit down.” 

Penelope watches with dismay as FP strides back to the jock corner and flops down into his desk chair without a second glance. There’s not a single notebook or pen anywhere on his person - he’s clearly not paying attention to anything happening at the front of the room. 

Great. Penelope had more reason than most of her classmates to hope she learned a lot from this unit. And she was stuck with someone who would never, ever take it seriously! 

Penelope pulls her purse toward her and nestles Ophelia into it, tucking a wad of tissues around her for safekeeping. At least they had each other. Mr. Kandinsky begins lecturing about the responsibilities of marriage, and Penelope hurriedly pulls a pen out of her bag and starts jotting down notes. 

Unfortunately, there was a lot about marriage that she needed to know. 


	2. DAY TWO

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to Kim for naming Alice and Hiram's egg. And to Alexa for naming Penelope's. 🥰

**DAY TWO.**

“I’m sure most of you have some idea what you want to do with your lives. Be it an accountant, a doctor, a teacher, or a stay-at-home parent, you’ll find the information on income here.” Mr. Kandinsky drops a stack of paper titled _U.S. Employment Statistics_ on Penelope’s desk before carrying on down the row. “Each pair will use the average incomes outlined in this book to construct their household budget. The budget will be due at the end of the two weeks, when you turn in your eggs.” 

“This is ridiculous,” Hiram complains loudly from the middle of the class. “I have a trust fund.” 

Penelope turns around, craning her neck to see if FP had materialized in the back corner. Still no. The desk between Marty Mantle and Harry Clayton remains empty. Mr. Kandinsky had made it clear that both partners would be held responsible if one of them slipped behind. She couldn’t even count on FP to show up for classes! 

With a sigh, Penelope opens the report. Every other group had paired off - Tom and Sierra were chatting cozily to her left, while Mary and Fred were bickering about something to her right. 

She’s halfway through a list of science careers when the classroom door finally creaks open, and FP slips in. He makes as though to head for his usual desk before their eyes meet. FP changes direction and drops into a chair next to Penelope’s desk. 

“Do you have the egg?” is the first thing FP says to her. Then his gaze lands on the decorated bassinet that Penelope had spent the night making out of a strawberry basket. “Oh. I was wondering where it went.” 

Fighting the urge to roll her eyes, Penelope scoots her chair over so he can sit down. “Cute basket,” says FP, looking surprised. He touches the red velvet lining with his thumb and brushes the glittery word _Ophelia_ spelled out across the front. 

“I just thought you wouldn’t want to do stuff like that.” Penelope explains in a rush. 

“You thought right.” FP squints at her. “What kind of name is Ophelia?” 

“It’s from Hamlet.” 

“Never read it.” 

“We studied it last semester.” Penelope frowns, puzzled. “You sat two rows over for me in English.” 

“Huh.” FP combs a hand cooly through his hair. “Well, anyway. What are we supposed to do now?” 

Penelope lets out a slow, deep breath. At least he was letting her take the lead. “This is a list of possible careers,” she explains, showing him the book. “We’re choosing the ones we want, and using the salary to estimate-” 

“Jones!” To Penelope’s annoyance, a huge burly football player suddenly plunks down in the seat next to them. “How are we feeling about the game on Friday?” 

FP’s face lights up in a smile, and he turns to face his teammate, effectively shutting Penelope out. She stares in dismay as the two start reciting plays and recounting previous football victories. With a sigh, she turns back to the manual and opens it to where she left off. 

“A baseball-playing rockstar is not a real career!” Penelope hears Mary yell from two seats over. Penelope shakes her head and carefully copies down a list of common monthly household expenses. 

“I had no idea how much these things cost,” she whispers, mostly to herself. In addition to having to pay for food, there was rent, electricity, plumbing, home expenses, child-related expenses, health care costs, and transportation expenses - and that was before ever considering things like clothes and shopping. The numbers listed beside the columns were totally foreign to her. She couldn’t even tell if those amounts added up to a lot of money or not. 

She’s anxiously copying the example budget out of the book when FP turns around. 

“That’s way too much for hydro,” he says in an offhand voice. “It’s like, forty bucks a month.” 

He turns back around to keep chatting with his teammate, saving Penelope the embarrassment of being caught staring at him in shock. Carefully, she erases her estimate and replaces it with the new number, wondering the whole time why FP would know such a thing. Was he a good student just acting like a bonehead to be popular? Or was he just messing with her as all the popular kids did? 

She watches him curiously, but FP’s too focused on ranting about Baxter High’s football team to offer any more insight. 

* * *

Hiram flicks a piece of lint off the cuff of his blazer and scowls. “Why should someone like me have to figure out a budget? I’m never going to have to live on a budget.” 

Alice rolls her eyes so hard that they hurt. “Hiram, all I can say after two days of this is thank _God_ I don’t have to be married to you in real life.” 

Hiram straightens up like she’s paid him a compliment. “Of course,” he preens, fixing his hair. “After college, I’ll meet someone who’s wealthy, exotic, beautiful, and my intellectual equal, while you’re all still slumming it in Riverdale.” 

“Your intellectual equal would be Daffy Duck,” Alice fires back, plunking her purse down on the table. Neither of them had made a bassinet for their baby, so the egg - Hiram had christened it Sebastian - was currently sitting in Hiram’s thermos. 

Alice takes a pen out of her purse and starts jotting down notes from the board. After a while, she notices Hiram hasn’t moved to do the same. In fact, he’s staring at his reflection in a small square mirror taped inside his notebook and idly combing his hair. 

Alice taps him hard on the shoulder. “Aren’t you going to take notes?” 

“Chill out.” Hiram looks at her like she’s a gum wrapper on the floor. “We don’t both need to take notes.” 

“I’m not taking notes for both of us.” 

“We’re a team, remember?” Hiram asks, echoing Mr. Kandinsky’s words. He glances at his nails and furrows his brow. “This kind of stuff just isn’t my thing.” 

“You’re not at all concerned about developing skills for later in life?” 

“Skills I could pay someone else to have? Not likely.” Hiram yawns. “But good luck with the budget. You have my full moral support.” 

“You’re an idiot,” Alice fumes, pulling out her calculator to add up a line of numbers. Hiram leans over her shoulder. 

“What’s that? Sebastian’s tuition fees?” 

“That’s our annual income, Hiram.” 

Hiram’s jaw drops. “That’s impossible. No one can live on a number that small.” He jabs at the paper. “Add my trust fund in.” 

Alice grits her teeth. The small number was more money than she’d ever seen in her life. “I don’t think you’re allowed to dip into your trust fund for this project.” 

“Well, I’m not compromising my baby’s education because his mother decides she wants to be some lowly novelist.” He purses his lips and pushes the career manual toward her. “Choose something that pays better.” 

Alice gives him a glare that could melt steel. “Yesterday you didn’t want me to have a career at all. You told me to be a stay at home housewife.” 

“I was kidding,” replies Hiram, in a flat tone that suggests he wasn’t at all. “Look, just fix the budget so that we can pay off all our household expenses and still have enough for travel and entertainment.” 

“Travel and entertainment,” Alice repeats. 

“Right. And clothes. I’d say Sebastian’s wardrobe would be about twenty a year.” 

“I hope that means twenty dollars,” Alice mutters through gritted teeth. 

“Twenty _thousand!_ What’s wrong with you?” Hiram taps her calculator again. “Oh, and I’ll be going on business trips at least three times a year, so budget for my flights. First-class, obviously.” 

“If you’re always on business trips, who’s raising our son?” 

Hiram shrugs. “Put him in daycare or something. A good one. Oh, or a nanny.” He looks over at the group sitting ahead of them. “Ask Mary if she’ll be our nanny. I’m sure _Fred’s_ not making her any money.” 

Alice rolls her eyes. She had to listen to enough of Fred and Hiram’s rivalry outside of class - having to hear about it during class as well was turning her stomach. “Well, at least he’ll look good while he’s starving to death,” she mocks. 

“It’s not like your clothing budget is going to break the bank.” Hiram nods in dismay at the outfit Alice is wearing - a worn denim skirt with a short, spaghetti-strapped tank top. “What’s that, Forever 22 chic?” 

It’s not even that, it had come from a thrift store, but Alice won’t give him the satisfaction of knowing it. Instead she swings her mechanical pencil down hard toward Hiram’s hand, pausing with the point of the lead digging a millimeter into his flesh. “One more word and this goes all the way through.” 

Hiram is agog. “Don’t put your pencil through my hand!” 

“Next time it’ll be your eye. Do your work.” 

“Feisty, feisty,” Hiram smirks as she puts the pencil back to paper. “I never was one for bad girls, but I guess for Sebastian’s mother I’ll make an exception.” 

Alice grabs his wrist in her hand and digs her nails in so hard that the marks turn white. 

“Shut the fuck up,” she hisses under her breath at him, because Mr. Kandinsky had looked around at the noise they were making. Hiram just rolls his eyes, looking down at their joined hands in disgust. 

“Ew. You need a manicure, stat.” He pulls his hand sharply out of Alice’s grip. “Put _that_ in the budget. I’m going for a walk.” 

* * *

“This is beneath me,” announces Marty Mantle at the back of the room, thumbing through the career manual before dumping it unceremoniously on Gladys Cohen’s desk. “Car salesman. There. Now you choose one.” 

“Do they have an entry for selling weed?” Gladys asks, focused on pulling the split ends out of her bangs. 

Marty turns around to look at her, interested for the first time. “How much for a gram?” 

“You buying?” 

“No. I’m selling too. I want to make sure you’re not stealing my customers. Then again, your shit probably sucks. If you ever want a good high, come to me.” 

“I’ll pass,” replies Gladys dryly. Marty leans in close to her. 

“You sell anything harder than weed?” 

“Sometimes.” 

“You ever done acid?” 

“Sure. Tons of times.” 

Marty snaps open both sides of his hard-sided pencil case with the air of a professional marksman opening his rifle. Inside is an array of what looks like brightly coloured pixie stix. “This shit is even better.” 

“What the hell is that?” Gladys laughs. “Did you mug a second-grader outside the arcade?” 

“Jingle jangle.” says Marty importantly. “Most batshit crazy high of your life.” 

“Out of a pixie stick?” 

“Whatever.” Marty snaps his pencil case closed. “Just come to me if you want some good shit. The JJ is serious stuff.” 

“JJ. Right.” Gladys thumbs through the manual. “Let’s just say we’re both self-employed.” 

“This project is appalling.” Marty interrupts, surveying the classroom with dismay. “I don’t know what Mr. Kandinsky’s thinking. He’s mixed up all the cliques. Cliques aren’t supposed to interact like this. It’s ruining the social hierarchy of the school.” 

“Mm-hmm.” Gladys resumes picking at her split ends. While she preferred this banter to their previous topic of conversation - Marty loudly ranking every girl in their class from one to fourteen - she was less than enthralled with Marty’s fanatic devotion to what he saw as the acceptable rules of their high school. 

“Take you and me, for example,” Marty speaks up. “I’d say I’m very high up in the social hierarchy. I’m a jock. Jocks are very highly regarded, especially when they’re rich and popular. You, on the other hand, are a run of the mill stoner type.” 

Gladys looks interested for the first time. “You’d say I’m a stoner?” 

“Obviously.” He nods to the cluster of desks around them. “You and Tom Keller and all the skateboarders who sit here. You’re always high, and you sit in the back right of every class, where all the stoners sit.” 

“I didn’t realize cliques were sorted based on seating arrangement,” Gladys quips, rooting around in her desk for the cold McRonald’s fries she’d stowed there after lunch. She pops one in her mouth. Apparently this was the wrong thing to say. Marty barrels right into an explanation. 

“Unofficially, they are. Stoners sit here. But don’t feel bad. At least you’re not sitting with the losers.” He nods to the center of the back row. “You could be sitting with Alice Smith and the other outcasts.” 

Gladys ignores the odd stab of guilt that arises from her complicated history with Alice, and turns to look out the window. Marty, unable to take a hint, keeps talking. 

“Back left is for jocks. Then all the other popular kids and the preps sit in the middle.” He nods to the center row of the class. “Hermione’s the Queen Bee, so she’s in the middle, with her most ardent admirers on either side.” 

“What’s Fred, then?” Gladys asks. She takes another bite of her cold french fries, resolved to enjoying Marty making a fool of himself. 

“Fred is a class clown type,” Marty says, exaggerating the phrase with out of place air quotes. “Popular, but not as popular as some people.” 

“Well, if he’s popular and a jock, he should be in your clique.” 

“But he’s not,” Marty replies firmly. “You really don’t understand how this works, do you?” 

“Guess not.” Gladys offers him a fry and Marty pulls a face. 

“Sickening. Anyway, preps in the middle, but nerds in the front. That’s people like Darryl Doiley, Penelope Blossom. Then the debate club kids, who are marginally more socially acceptable, sit off to one side.” He nods toward where Sierra and Tom are engrossed in conversation. 

“What about people who don’t fit into any of your six categories?” Gladys watches as Hiram strolls casually back into the room, carrying a huge bottle of sparkling water from the convenience store across the street. Alice looks like she wants to throw their egg in his face. 

“Everyone ultimately fits into one or another,” says Marty confidently. “If you can’t be categorized you won’t get anything out of the high school experience.” 

“So how come I’m a stoner, and you’re not, but you sell weed and pixie stix out of your pencil case?” 

“Because they cost more than you could ever afford.” 

Gladys rolls her eyes and looks out the window again. Marty pecks at his calculator in a bored way before shoving it off to the side. 

“This is ridiculous. Listen. I’ll cut you a deal.” 

Gladys quirks an eyebrow. “What kind of deal?” 

“I get a generous monthly allowance,” Marty replies importantly. “Supplemented by my alternative income. If you do this entire project yourself, I’ll pay you a hundred bucks.” 

“Two hundred.” 

“Please. You’ve probably never even seen two hundred dollars.” 

Gladys narrows her eyes. “Two hundred, or I walk.” 

“Two hundred for an A,” Marty bargains. “One hundred for a B. Fifty for a C.” 

“Seventy-five for a C. A hundred-fifty for a B. And regardless of grade, you throw in two of those pixie sticks.” 

“Now you’re talking.” Marty doesn’t seem to care about the numbers. He meets her handshake vigorously. “Pleasure doing business with you.” 

Gladys picks up Marty’s scientific calculator. “This is a nice calculator.” 

“Take it.” Marty yawns and slouches back in his chair. “I have more at home.” 

* * *

“Why did you put stickers on our baby?!” Hal Cooper snaps from the second row. Mary twists around in her chair to see better. Sure enough, the surface of Hal and Hermione’s egg is plastered in a tasteful array of colourful Lisa Frank stickers. 

“They look nice,” Hermione retorts sharply. “Not that _you_ would know anything about style. I’m the one who’s a famous clothing designer.” 

Fred snickers at the argument, engrossed in the page of their booklet that detailed major league sports salaries. Mary glares across the desk at her husband, who glances up and then returns the glare right back. 

“Could you choose something more realistic, please?” Mary demands, trying to pull the booklet out of his hands. “There’s no chance of you making it to the major leagues, _and_ having your rock career take off. I’m not losing marks because Mr. Kandinsky thinks we’re _both_ idiots with no grip on reality.” 

Fred pouts. “I don’t want to be married to someone who doesn’t support my career.” 

“Well, I don’t want to be married to someone who's going to be bald by the time they’re in the twelfth grade,” Mary retorts. Fred’s mouth drops open. 

“I’m not bald!” 

Mary stares pointedly at his hairline. “Oh yeah? Looks pretty thin to me.” 

Fred’s hand quickly flies to his head before his eyes narrow in annoyance. “At least I have a soul.” 

“Excuse me?” 

“Redheads have no soul. They’re agents of Satan.” 

“Suppose our egg daughter grew red hair! What would you say to her!” 

“Bruce the second takes after me.” He holds the egg up to his face. “Don’t you see the resemblance?” 

“Her name is _Belinda._ And I sure do. Bald as an egg.” 

“Stop!” Fred tucks the egg into his vest pocket and rushes his free hand worriedly back to his hair. “Right, because I’m sure your career path is going to be so much more realistic. Or do you have a trust fund too?” Hiram had been preening about his money loud enough for the whole class to get an earful. 

“I intend to work for my money.”

“Great. I married someone with no money _and_ no soul.” 

“Better than having no money and no brains!” 

Mary’s prepared for Fred to hurl another insult back at her, but instead he throws back his head and laughs like she’s said something hilarious. If anything, that made her angrier. Fred had no good comeback and didn’t care at all. There was nothing worse than being mad at someone who didn’t even have the decency to be annoyed back. 

“Get the egg out of your vest,” she complains instead. “She should be in her basket.” 

Fred holds Belinda protectively. “She likes being close to her dad. Skin to skin contact is good for newborns. Or, y’know.” He glances down. “Eggshell to denim.” 

Mary rolls her eyes. “Fine. Now give me that manual.” She pulls the paper out of Fred’s hands. “I’m going to be a lawyer, if you’re interested.” 

Fred frowns. “I don’t know. If I’m touring on rock shows and playing MLB games, who’s going to take care of Bruce the second? Being a lawyer sounds like you’d have a busy schedule. Maybe you should choose something less involved.” 

Mary stares at him. He was serious. 

“Excuse me, Fred, in what world would I put my perfectly reasonable career on hold so that after I’ve shackled myself to you, after I’ve ruined my body carrying your child, you can chase some deluded male power fantasy while I stay at home caring for our daughter? In what _universe_ would I-” 

She’s interrupted by Mr. Kandinski clearing his throat loudly over her shoulder. “Please keep your voice down, Mary. Other groups are taking this project seriously. Please give them the courtesy of working quietly.” 

Mary’s jaw drops. How was it that Fred was the one ruining this entire project, and she was the one getting in trouble!? 

“I’ll try to keep her under control,” Fred says soberly to Mr. Kandinsky. “It’s sad that some people just don’t take class projects seriously. But you know what they say about fiery redheads.” 

Mary glares daggers at him, and Fred turns around with a grin. “Your face is as red as your hair,” he points out with a snicker, once the teacher’s out of earshot. “Give me the manual back. I need to find out my rockstar-baseball player salary.” 

Mary rolls the manual into a tube and smacks it as hard as she can into Fred’s chest. Fred’s mouth drops open, and for a moment Mary thinks she’s really hurt him. But then his gaze drops to the leaking pocket of his denim vest, and Mary’s heart sinks all the way to her shoes. 

Fred holds up a dripping piece of eggshell, the pink sticker still intact, and laughs the most annoying hyena-laugh that Mary’s ever heard. “You crushed Bruce _again._ I guess we need to budget for some anger management classes.” 

“Mary, Fred, please see me after class,” Mr. Kandinsky speaks up soberly. Mary feels like she’s about to cry. Or strangle her partner. 

To her surprise, Fred turns to her with a sorrowful, penitent look on his face. “I’m sorry,” he says honestly. “I feel really bad.” 

“You do?” Mary asks, surprised. 

“Yeah,” answers Fred, an annoyingly familiar grin spreading across his face. “For _me._ I married a serial baby killer, and this is my favourite vest.”


	3. DAY FIVE

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm going away for the weekend so have the third chapter in three days... i have no life

**DAY FIVE**

“Friday!” Hermione declares, falling back onto her four-poster bed with her arms spread wide. “I thought today would never come. This week has been a nightmare.” 

“You’re telling me!” Mary replies, dropping her overnight bag into its usual position by the foot of Hermione’s desk. She sinks onto Hermione’s bed, seizing one of her decorative pillows and pummeling it with all her strength. “I hate Fred Andrews, I hate him, I hate him, I hate him!” 

Hermione laughs and pulls the pillow back. “I don’t know what you’re so mad about. Fred is a lot of fun.” 

Mary glares at her. “A toothache is a lot of fun, Hermione. A skin graft is a lot of fun. Compared to Fred, a double knee amputation would just be a barrel of laughs. Look at what he did to our budget!” She holds out an orange folder, and Hermione opens it and lays it across her lap. “Look at all the idiotic things he put under necessities.” 

Hermione glances over the paper and lets out a laugh. “An Olympic-size swimming pool, seventeen dogs, a basketball court, and parasailing lessons,” she reads. “Sounds good to me.” She pulls a purple folder out of her own bag, and combs an aggravated hand through her shiny hair. “I’m having the worst luck with my budget too. Hal is refusing to let me incorporate any personal care items other than the bare essentials. He wants us to live like paupers on his measly little newspaper editor salary.” 

Curious, Mary peers over her shoulder. “Manicures, massages, annual country club membership… Wow, you and Fred should be together.” 

“It’s not like Hal and I don’t have the money,” Hermione protests. “I’m a famous soap opera star  _ and  _ clothing designer. It’s not my fault Hal wants some lame job working for the  _ Riverdale Register _ all his life.” She flings the budget across the bed with a disgusted sigh. “To think I thought this project was going to be romantic.” 

Mary folds her arms, leaning against the wall. “When will you learn there’s nothing romantic about any of the boys in our class? That’s why I’m waiting until college to date.” 

“Oh, is  _ that _ why.” Hermione dangles her head off the edge of the bed, letting her hair stream down like a waterfall as she smirks upside-down at her friend. “I can’t wait until you and Fred realize that all this arguing is just poorly disguised sexual tension.” 

“You’re going to be waiting a long time!” Mary retorts, disgusted. 

Hermione laughs and flips back upright. “Where’s your egg, anyway? I thought this was a playdate.” 

Mary sighs and trudges back to her book bag to get the new, pink-stickered egg that Mr. Kandinsky had entrusted her and Fred after Tuesday's fiasco. They were now looking at ten points off their final grade. 

“What’s this one,” Hermione asks, “Bruce Springsteen the third?” 

“Her name is  _ Belinda _ ,” Mary corrects her. “And it’s not funny. We’ve wrecked so many eggs that I don’t know if we’ll be able to get an A without any extra credit. Mr. Kandinsky says we can plan and prepare a nutritious meal in the home ec classroom to make up the marks, but that sounds like it’s going to be an even bigger disaster!” 

Hermione holds her hand palm-up for the egg, and plops it gently into Leonardo’s carrier. “Hal almost had a conniption fit when I told him I wanted to take the egg home for the weekend,” she complains. “He doesn’t think I’m a responsible mother. Me! I told him where he could stick it if he wanted it all to himself, and he let up.”

Mary fumes. “At least Hal’s taking it seriously. Can you believe Fred called me the other day and asked me to put the egg on the phone so he could say goodnight to it?” 

Hermione laughs. “Maybe he just wanted an excuse to call you.” 

“Are you crazy?” Mary retorts. “He’s got bees in his brain, that’s all.” 

“The opposite of love’s indifference,” Hermione quotes sagely. “It’s like kindergarten. Boys only tease you when they’re interested.” 

“Or because most boys are disrespectful jerks!” 

Hermione fluffs her hair. “Mary, do you really think you know more about boys than me?” 

“I know enough,” Mary answers grumpily. Hermione squeezes back next to her on the bed and wraps an arm around her waist. Mary eyes her suspiciously. “Why are you trying to set me up with Fred anyway? I thought you liked him.” 

“I just hate to see two people so obviously in love with each other forced apart,” replies Hermione, laughing at Mary's expression.

Mary stands up abruptly. “If you’re going to be disgusting, I’m going to leave.” 

“Oh, Mary.” Hermione shakes her head. “Fine. Sit down. I need to remake this entire budget anyway. You’re free to join me.” She huffs. “If Hal wasn’t so out of touch with reality, I wouldn’t have to be doing this on a Friday night.” 

“At least with Fred, I was prepared to do all the work myself,” Mary admits, pulling her own budget out of her backpack. “I’ve already started.” 

“Why are men such fuck-ups?” Hermione asks, grumpily examining her fingernails. “How typical is it of us to be doing all this work?” 

Mary nods fervently. “If I ever grow up and think about marrying Fred Andrews, even for a second - just shoot me.” 

* * *

“Forsythe, can we please focus?” Penelope asks plaintively. She and FP are sitting across from one another in Thornhill’s spacious library, their notes and handouts from health class spread out in between them. FP, as she’d come to expect, was more interested in goofing around than trying to catch up on the work they were both badly behind on. He’s currently folding a paper airplane out of the budget page she’d spent an hour figuring out. 

“All right, all right. Don’t lay an egg.” He winks at her. “Get it?” 

A thousand girls in their class would have killed for that wink, but all it does is make Penelope mad. She should have known trying to complete any kind of project with the class football hero would be a lost cause. All week, FP had been horsing around with other football players in class instead of doing his work. She should have given in and offered to do the entire thing herself. 

FP had spent most of the afternoon looking around Thornhill like he’d never seen anything like it, which had made Penelope terribly self-conscious. Her home was spacious, true, and expensive, but she knew that most kinds in her class would also find it weird. Having someone else here made Penelope kind of nervous - she never brought friends home, and for good reason. But FP seemed impressed with the space, and after demanding a huge snack from the fridge, had even told her she had a nice house. 

“Everything’s a lot more complex than I thought,” Penelope comments, turning a page worriedly in her notebook. She wanted to get every detail exactly right. “I didn’t think about budgeting repair costs at all. We didn’t decide anything about landscaping or house cleaning, like Hal and Hermione did. And we’re going to need to pay for Ophelia’s extracurriculars.” 

FP takes a huge bite of one of the cookies he’d taken from the kitchen, and a ton of crumbs tumble down into his shirt. “Easy. We forget about repairing anything, we say fuck it to landscaping and house cleaning, and we tell her to suck it up and that she’s not getting any extracurriculars.” 

“Watch the profanity, please,” Penelope scolds him, blushing. “How do you expect Ophelia to grow up and have a good sense of the world if she doesn’t participate in any extracurricular activities?” 

FP actually has the nerve to roll his eyes. “Who does extracurricular activities as a kid?” 

“I did!” Penelope replies hotly. “I had violin, piano, ballet, swimming, tennis, and horseback riding lessons, and I loved them! Just because our daughter isn’t a priority for you-” 

“Oh, bully for you,” FP replies cooly. “You might have noticed you also have a giant house with a marble swimming pool in it. I don’t think Ophelia’s parents have that kind of income.” 

“Well, we’d know exactly what our income would be if you could just pick a job!” Penelope replies, flustered. “You’ve been dawdling forever.” 

“I told you, just put down whatever for me.” FP examines his paper airplane. “I don’t care.” 

“How can you not care! This class is important. It’s teaching us what to expect when we get married-” 

“I’m never getting married.” 

“Well, I am!” Penelope cries, surprising herself. “I am, and I need to know! So please just cooperate with me, because if I flunk this class, I’m going to be completely unprepared for the rest of my life!” 

FP blinks at her, surprised. A ringing silence follows Penelope’s outburst, and she swallows nervously, blinking anxious tears out of her eyes. To her surprise, FP gives in without further argument. 

“Fine.” He says curtly, turning a page in the textbook. “Section 3B. Detail any debt obligations, such as student loans and credit card payments. Well, I’m not going to college, and I don’t have any credit cards. You?” 

Penelope swallows and folds her hands properly. “Well, first I’m going to Highsmith College, but it’s going to be paid off in full by my parents. So I won’t have any debt. Including credit card bills.” 

FP murmurs something under his breath, and she narrows her eyes. 

“What was that?” 

“Must be nice, I said,” FP repeats, raising his voice so she can hear him. There’s a trace of pointed bitterness in his tone. “Your parents, paying for all your shit.” 

“Well, who pays for your football uniform?” Penelope challenges him pointedly. 

“Fred does.” 

Penelope pauses, her mouth slightly ajar. Of all the possible answers to that question, she definitely hadn’t expected that one. FP looks both defiant and embarrassed, shifting awkwardly in his chair. 

“Coach Kleats waives the usual team fees because I’m first-string. The uniform deposit’s eighty bucks, and Fred paid it this year because his parents give him more money than mine do, and I can’t play without it.” He folds his arms. “I’m paying him back at the end of the year. Any more questions?” 

Penelope’s often been told that she misreads social cues. This seems like one of those times where it would be useful to have a brain that fired on all cylinders in interpersonal situations. Instead, she finds herself fighting to find the right thing to say and can only come up with: “Aren’t your parents proud that you’re a football star?” 

FP’s answer is completely honest and direct. “No.” 

Now it’s Penelope’s turn to shift awkwardly in her seat, directing her gaze down to the lushly carpeted floor. “Well, I think parents should be proud of their children's accomplishments,” she argues weakly. It’s the only balm she can offer. 

“Yeah.” Half of FP’s mouth quirks up into a wry smile. “That’s what I’ve got Fred for, I guess.” 

Penelope turns her attention to the notebook in her hand, erasing a column of numbers from her budget as she struggles to figure out what to say. Forsythe Jones, big man on campus, being vulnerable with her? This situation was too wrong. One minute they’d been bickering, and now she suddenly wanted to apologize to him. Penelope suddenly pulls the career booklet towards herself and flips through the pages at random, reaching out to stop them with her index finger. 

“Here,” she says, turning the book around to show FP where her finger had landed. “Your career is…. a… Human Resource Manager.” 

FP snorts in disgust. “Just put professional football player.” 

Penelope smiles to herself. At least he was showing an interest. She obediently copies down the salary for an NFL athlete, adding it to her botanist’s salary and subtracting the childcare expenses that she’d already worked out. After several minutes of silent working, their budget finally begins to take shape. She delegates some of the simpler tasks to FP, who frowns down at the calculator she lends him as though trying to decipher ancient runes. 

In no time at all, Rose Blossom is asking Penelope via the intercom system if her friend has a ride home. For a moment Penelope’s disappointed - it had been nice to have company for the evening, even if it was awkward. FP looks bemused at the old-fashioned intercom, tracing its gold-plated face with a cigarette-stained forefinger. 

“Can I take some of these home?” he asks Penelope as they’re packing up their notes. “I wasn’t really paying attention in class, and your notes are really good.” 

Penelope purses her lips, weighing the anxiety of lending out her notes against her gratitude at FP finally engaging himself. “Okay,” she agrees finally. “But don’t show my notes to anyone. Even Fred.” 

“Good point. We don’t want him trying to poach our ideas. Get it?” FP laughs annoyingly. “Eggs? Poached..?” 

Penelope groans as she pushes him toward the door. FP was still FP. 

* * *

“What are you doing?” Hiram complains. Alice throws down her pen in annoyance. For someone who had acted so disinterested in the assignment, Hiram sure had a lot to say about how she was choosing to complete it. 

“What?!” she snaps. The two of them are in a back booth at Pop’s, their egg resting on a stack of napkins. Hiram still refused to do any work on the assignment - but he was more than happy to sit watching Alice work, loudly and aggressively correcting her whenever something wasn’t to his liking. 

“We already decided we’re sending Sebastian to boarding school.” Hiram, adept at reading upside-down, scowls at her notebook over the rim of his chocolate milkshake. He stretches one arm out along the rim of the booth. “Why are you budgeting for school lunches?” 

“I actually decided against boarding school. I think public school would be a character-building experience for him.” 

“God.” Hiram rolls his eyes. “You sound exactly like my parents. That was precisely their reasoning for yanking me out of my prestigious boarding school and enrolling me in this dump.” 

“ _ I _ heard you got suspended,” replies Alice with a smirk, enjoying the way Hiram’s ears turn a subtle and telling shade of pink. “But I heard a couple different stories. Was it bullying or drugs?” 

Hiram’s eyes narrow and his face flames, and for a moment Alice considers that she’s pushed him too far. “Pretty high and mighty, Acid Queen Alice. I’ve seen the real you at parties. I don’t think even Hal knows about that side of you, does he?” 

Alice flushes. “Hal and I know everything about each other.” 

“Really?” Hiram spears a pickle and takes his time eating it off his fork. He eats everything like a supervillain. “You guys have barely started dating. Who’s he going to believe if I tell him the truth? 

Alice stabs the notebook in between them with the point of her knife so hard that Sebastian jumps on his bed of napkins. Two could play at the game of theatrical gestures with dining utensils. “What is this?” she growls. “Blackmail?” 

“Not blackmail.” Hiram frowns. “I’m just gloating. Geez, get off the crazy train.” He relaxes back into his booth, arms folded. “I have nothing to gain from Hal breaking things off with you. Much as it would please me to see you less.” 

Alice gives him a death glare, but removes her knife from the open book. “The sooner this project is done, the better.” 

Hiram smooths down his perfectly coiffed hair. “How do you think I feel? I’m damaging my reputation just being seen with you in public.” He sighs. “Nothing takes the romance out of marriage like getting paired with  _ you. _ ” 

“There’s nothing romantic about marriage,” Alice snaps. “It’s just two people fucking  _ fighting  _ all the time, and they can’t take a break from one another, so they have to kill each other or put up with it. It’s an excuse to tether a man to a woman so that she can’t escape him when he decides to be an asshole. There’s nothing romantic or remarkably pleasant about it!” 

Hiram widens his eyes and circles his ear with his forefinger in the hand gesture for  _ crazy.  _ “Someone never got over their childhood trauma.” 

Alice gives him the middle finger. She hates that Hiram can get under her skin. Many people have tried and failed to hurt her with words, and Alice had always been able to brush them off. But for some reason every stupid thing he said managed to needle her the wrong way. “Let’s just go over the questionnaire, and I’ll finish the budget at home.”

“No way am I letting you finish the budget if you’re pulling my son out of private school.” 

“Fine!” Alice scribbles all over the work she’d been doing. This was the third time in the last hour Hiram had tried to micromanage the project, despite declaring he wanted nothing to do with the work. “I’m putting him back in boarding school just so you’ll shut up.” 

Hiram folds his arms again. “A sensible decision. You may proceed.” 

Alice sighs, and pulls the parenting questionnaire toward her. In addition to the household budgets, Mr. Kandinsky had assigned them a series of discussion questions to give them a feel for the responsibility of parenting. 

“Here’s one for you,” she shoots at Hiram, reading from the paper. “Your child is acting out in school, and you’ve been warned several times by their teacher that they’re on the brink of suspension. Do you, A) consult a child psychologist, B) implement firmer discipline, or C) other.” 

“Firmer discipline,” Hiram says firmly. “Child psychologists are quacks.” 

“Right,” replies Alice, surprised that they agree. She glances further down the page. “All right. Your child is ill with the flu, but buying their medication would put you in a precarious financial situation. What do you do?” She snorts. “I’d tell them to drink some OJ and sleep it off. How about you?” 

“Agreed,” replies Hiram, picking in a bored way at his nails. 

Alice narrows her eyes. “I’m suspicious about how often we agree on this stuff. Either I’m a worse candidate for parenthood than I thought, or-” 

“You are a terrible candidate for parenthood.” 

“Oh, at least I’m not the one on business trips every other day!” Alice mocks him. “You’ll probably never even see your kid.” 

“Hey, I barely saw my dad and I grew up fine.” Hiram spears another pickle and points it at her. “Kids only count on their parents for cash and favours.” 

“That’s an awfully cynical thing to say.” 

“It’s the truth. Likewise, parents only care about their kids because they made them. Parenting is selfish on both ends.” 

Alice blinks, taken aback by his matter-of-fact tone. “Do you really think that?” 

“Of course! No one has a kid for the kid’s sake. You have a kid because you want a miniature version of yourself. Most people need someone to continue their legacy or inherit their money. Some people just want something to dump their emotional issues on. Maybe they want company. I dunno. But no one’s out here having a kid out of the goodness of their heart. And then the kid has to deal with all the bullshit in this world just because you wanted it. That’s selfish.” 

Alice sucks in a deep breath. “You don’t plan to have kids, then?” 

“Of course I’m having kids. But at least I can admit I’m having them for selfish reasons.” 

“It’s such a delight to see this project bring out your warm paternal instinct,” Alice deadpans. She slams her purse down on the table as she rises from the booth. “I’m having a smoke. Do whatever you want with the budget.” 

She storms out of the restaurant, leaving Hiram to dawdle over the papers. Stupid, she curses herself, wrapping her arms around herself in the cool air. He’d spent their first forty minutes at Pop’s calling her a pig and criticizing the way she was slurping her milkshake, and that hadn’t bothered her. But something about the combination of Hal and parenting had struck a nerve. 

As she’s blowing a thin stream of smoke off in the direction of the parking lot, she notices a familiar car idling by the curb. Squinting out of the neon lights that circled Pop’s entrance, she recognizes the voices and silhouettes of Sierra Samuels and Tom Keller, both talking and laughing with the windows rolled down. 

“Hi, Alice!” Sierra calls when she gets closer. She hangs out of the window and looks at the blonde sympathetically. “How’s working with Hiram?” 

“Oh, you know,” Alice replies sarcastically, gesturing with her cigarette. “He’s a real family man.”

Both Sierra and Tom laugh, though she hadn’t said anything particularly funny. 

“How are you guys doing?” she asks. “Tom?” 

Tom and Alice were hardly the best of friends, but Tom doesn’t look guarded or annoyed in the slightest as he smiles at her from the driver’s seat. “Great,” he replies, wrapping an arm around Sierra. There’s a glow emanating from his cheeks and face that has nothing to do with the streetlights. “We just took Jane to the drive-in.” 

Alice glances into the front of the car. Sure enough, Tom and Sierra’s egg was sitting upright in the cupholder. 

“Cute,” she observes, sucking in another lungful of smoke. 

“It was a family-friendly movie, of course,” Sierra grins, turning to look at Tom. His face breaks into a soft, carefree smile, tucking a strand of Sierra’s hair behind her ear. Alice taps some ash off the end of her cigarette. At least someone in their class was getting the most out of this project. 

“Alice.” Sierra’s turned back to her, a frown creasing her pretty face for the first time. “Um. Our parents don’t really know that we’re working together, and I said I was out with some debate kids tonight, so if you don’t mind…” 

Alice zips her lips and then blows a ring of smoke. “Mum’s the word.” 

Truth be told, Alice was great at keeping secrets simply because she couldn’t be bothered to care about much of other people’s business. Well, some of the time. Sometimes she liked to know things. But she kept them to herself. 

Sierra smiles, relieved. “Thanks, Alice.” 

“Well, I better get back.” Alice narrates, tossing her cigarette butt into the gutter. “Hiram should be done investing our kid’s tuition in the stock market by now.” 

When she returns to their table and drops into the booth, Hiram is frowning at the booklet on household expenses. 

“Can you believe poor people have to clean their own homes? How terribly sad to see how the other half lives.” 

“What’s terribly sad is that your parents decided to carry you to term,” Alice replies immediately. Hiram ignores her, tapping pompously on the folder with his pen. 

“I think you’ve done the budget all wrong. I’d like to bring it home and do it properly. Only a hundred dollars a month for food? Really? How is Sebastian supposed to have a balanced diet if we can barely afford pheasant and caviar? Also, you completely forgot to budget for his piano lessons. This parenting book Mr. Kandinsky lent us says that learning an instrument will allow your child to be ahead of their peers developmentally when they reach the first grade.” 

Alice rolls her eyes and pulls her milkshake back toward her. “Fine. You can finish the budget.” 

“I’d like to take this questionnaire home too. I want to make sure we’re making the right decisions for Sebastian’s future.” 

To be honest, Hiram was taking over the entire project. But Alice wasn’t really in the mood to get into another fight with him. It was better than him doing nothing. 

“Just bring it back and let me read it before we hand it in. And please actually do the work.” 

“Of course I will,” replies Hiram pompously. “If my son can’t count on his mother to raise him properly, I suppose it’ll have to be up to me.” 


	4. DAY SIX

**DAY SIX**

“You remade our entire budget?!” Hal yells across the classroom. “I wanted to hand it in today!” 

“Could you not shake the table?” Hermione remarks crossly in reply. “I’m painting my nails.”

There’s five minutes until the health class bell rings, and the class is in chaos. Every married couple is bickering. Most students are out of their seats, fighting loudly with one another. Marty, with nothing to do, is drifting from group to group creating chaos. He’s currently holding Darryl and Melinda’s egg out of the second-floor window, threatening to drop it. 

Before Hal’s face can turn a darker shade of red, Fred plops down into a chair at Hermione’s desk. “Hey,” he says cheerfully, ignorant of their ongoing fight. “Hal, how much did you budget for car expenses? Hi, Hermione,” he adds, turning to the brunette with the awed, lovestruck expression he always reserved for her. “I like how you decorated your baby. It’s really cute.” 

Hermione shoots a triumphant look at Hal, who shakes his head in disgust. Fred picks the egg up out of its basket and admires it. “What’s his name?” 

“Leo,” replies Hal brusquely, at the same time as Hermione says, “Leonardo.” They glare at each other. Fred nods knowingly. 

“Ah. After the Ninja Turtle.” He turns back to Hermione with a tender expression. “I hope you’re treating her right, Hal. Not everyone’s lucky enough to be married to Hermione Gomez.” 

“She’s treating herself,” Hal mutters darkly, turning a page in the budget. “She’s just using my money for it.” 

“Your money!” Hermione thunders furiously. “Who makes eighty percent of our annual income!” 

“Just because I’m not idiot enough to decide I’m being a soap opera star when I grow up-” 

“ _ And _ a part-time clothing designer. If you want to see an idiot you should look in the mirror, Hal Cooper! You lucked out on this assignment! Do you know how great of a wife and mother I would be?!” 

Fred laughs nervously. “Well, gotta go.” He nudges Hal hard in the ribs, indicating Mary with a nod. “The old ball and chain, you know how it is.” 

Hal completely ignores him. He glares at Hermione, narrowing his eyes to a squint. “You know what, soap operas are the perfect career for you. You’re shallow, narrow-minded, selfish-” 

“Hey-” Fred speaks up, but Hermione slaps a freshly painted finger over his lips, silencing him in his tracks. 

“How dare you talk to me that way! I could ruin your life, Hal Cooper. I could ruin it with one single word!” 

“Oh, come on,” Hal protests. “One word?” 

Hermione smiles. She leans in and whispers something in Hal’s ear, hiding it with her perfectly manicured hand. Then she draws back and faces him with a self-satisfied smirk. 

Hal’s face goes abruptly pale. Fred looks from Hal to Hermione. When no answer presents itself, he rises and scurries quickly back to his desk. Some things weren't worth finding out. 

* * *

“So how much is the uniform going to cost?” Alice asks, dropping into her chair beside Hiram and gulping the last of her morning coffee. Hiram has their budget laid out in a monogrammed leather folder in front of him. “For boarding school.” 

“Oh, I’ve decided he should be enrolled as a day student, now.” Hiram says, looking up from his reading. He waves the cover of the book annoyingly in her face. “Have you read this?” 

“Yes,” lies Alice, slapping it away from her. Hiram keeps brandishing the book at her like it’s the old testament. 

“This is completely making me rethink that questionnaire. You should really read this book, Alice. I read it cover-to-cover over the weekend. It’s really interesting,” Hiram nods impassionately along to the sound of his own voice. “Did you know that being involved in your child’s life bolsters their development, confidence, and pretty much all of their skills? Children with absent parents don’t do as well as those who are present.” 

“What does that make us?” Alice asks cooly. But Hiram just keeps nodding. 

“If I ever become a father, I’d like to really do it. You know - be involved and everything. No matter how busy I got.” 

Alice rolls her eyes. For the past week, Hiram had flatly refused to do any work on this assignment. Now he was suddenly vying for father of the year. “It’s an egg. But fine. I’m thrilled this book made you develop a conscience.” 

“It’s fascinating,” Hiram interrupts, talking over her as though Alice isn’t speaking. “You have no idea how much you’re doing wrong. For example, do you know how much better children do when their parents present a strong, unified front? You disagreeing with me all the time is going to stunt Sebastian’s development.” 

“Is that so?” Alice deadpans. She runs a hand through her tangled, curly hair. “I hope our  _ egg _ can handle it.” 

“His name is  _ Sebastian,”  _ Hiram snaps. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to take over as the leader of this project. You’ve clearly already stunted his growth.”

“Someone clearly stunted _ your _ growth,” Alice snaps. “Why the hell would I let you take over this project? I don’t want you to fuck everything up.” 

“You can count on me,” says Hiram self-importantly, throwing his chest out. “I just happen to think it’s important for fathers to be involved in their child’s life.” 

Alice gives in. Sometimes it was best not to look a gift horse in the mouth. “Whatever,” she says, pulling her notebook toward herself. “Go nuts. I’ll be working on our English project if you need me.” 

“I’ve changed my tune, Alice,” Hiram insists seriously as Mr. Kandinsky walks into the room and begins to write the date on the board. “I had no idea of the negative impact I was having on Sebastian’s life. From now on, I’m going to be a family man.” 

* * *

“Class, today and tomorrow I’ll be collecting your preliminary drafts of your budgets.” Mr. Kandinsky dusts some chalkboard dust off his hands and drops the chalk into a tray on his desk. “If you’d like to get an early opinion, please leave the budget on my desk, clearly labeled with your names. Otherwise, you have the rest of this period to use as you please.”

Fred turns to Mary. “Did we ever finish that?” 

“We?!” Mary is appalled. She slaps the folder down between their two desks. “I did the entire thing this weekend, since you couldn’t be bothered to help out at all, except for making stupid jokes! I worked on this for ten hours!” 

“Hmmm..” Fred pulls the budget toward him with an exaggerated air of concentration. He opens the cover and frowns. “Where’s my parasailing lessons?” 

Mary’s fist swings up to hit him, and Fred quickly throws his hands up to his face, Belinda held carefully in one palm. “Wait! Wait! I have a baby! You wouldn’t hit your own daughter, would you?” He cradles the egg close to his cheek. “Look how small and innocent she is. Try to repress that killer instinct, Mary, please.” 

Mary sets her fist back down, fuming. “You realize we have to do the extra credit component if we want to pull our grades out of the toilet.” 

“Oh, and whose fault is that,  _ baby killer _ ?” 

“You provoked me!” Mary yells. 

“I’ve just been sitting here minding my own business!”

“Sitting there is right! You haven’t done anything for this project!” 

“I named her, didn’t I? 

The rest of his breath is pushed violently out of his body as Mary punches him hard in the stomach. To her horror, she hears Mr. Kandinsky clear his throat loudly at the outburst. 

“Mary, Fred. I’m very disappointed in you two. I thought I could count on you to settle your disagreements with words, not fists.” Mr. Kandinsky sighs heavily. “Please see me after class for detention. _ Both _ of you.” 

* * *

Penelope watches Mary’s thunderstruck expression with sympathy. She knew firsthand how awful it was to get detention for something that wasn’t your fault at all. Only last week she’d had to serve a detention for trying to uphold the school rules when she’d found Alice Smith smoking in the bathroom! It was hardly her fault that Alice had got them both in trouble. 

Maybe she was lucky to have the partner she did. FP’s untouchable status on the high school food chain was a nuisance, but at least he wasn’t a hazard like Fred. Then again, she doubted she and Fred would disagree as vehemently as Fred and Mary did. They had been fighting like this since kindergarten. 

As she’s come to expect, the class is more than halfway finished by the time the door cracks open and FP trudges in, late. He drops into the seat beside her, wearing tattered jeans and an old sweatshirt that seems to be barely hanging by a thread. Penelope glances worriedly at the teacher’s desk to see if they’ll get in trouble, but Kandinsky had stepped out into the hallway to moderate a particularly violent disagreement over preschools between Harry Clayton and Nancy Wilson. 

“Sorry,” FP grunts. “Overslept.” 

“I’m going to hand in our budget for feedback,” Penelope tells him in a whisper. “I want to make sure it’s the best that it can be.” 

“Okay, well, while you’re doing that, I’m going to take a nap.” FP reclines in his chair, tipping his head back so that most of his hair lands on the desk behind him. Penelope sighs and continues taking notes out of the textbook with her pen. 

“Oh, I almost forgot.” FP reaches into his bookbag and pulls out a sheaf of lined paper. “I brought your notes back.” 

He drops them on her desk, and Penelope stares at the stack of papers in dismay. Her beautiful, colour-coded, handwritten notes were smeared with a stomach-turning mixture of cheese fingerprints and fry grease. It wasn’t just one or two, either - some of the pages were so soiled with food that they were beyond recognition. 

“Sorry about the ketchup stains,” FP says. “I was eating.” 

Before Penelope knows it, she’s lost her temper. “How could you!” she yells. “I lent you those notes under the explicit understanding that you were to take care of them! I lent you those notes and you knew I still needed them, you  _ knew  _ they were important to me, and you still spilled hamburgers all over them!” 

“That was a club sandwich,” FP corrects her. He points to a particularly noxious looking smudge. “See, that’s the mayo and tomato.” 

“Forsythe!” 

“Wait.” FP holds the page up to his nose and sniffs it. “You’re right. That was from the cheeseburger.” 

“You’re disgusting!” Penelope snaps. “I can’t believe you’d treat another person’s personal things like this! Do you have any idea how hard I worked on those notes? I copied them out, I recopied them in my best handwriting, I went over them with a highlighter, I colour coded everything, I stayed up extra late reading the textbook-” 

“Chill out,” FP complains. “They’re just notes.” 

“They are not just notes! I just explained to you how hard I worked on them!” 

“Fine,” FP moans. “I’ll recopy them for you. I’m sorry.” He turns to Fred, who’s sitting a few desks away. “Can I borrow a pencil?” 

To Penelope’s horror, he grabs a crumpled piece of graph paper from the inside of his desk and begins writing, squinting at the soiled note paper and taking exaggerated pauses between words, like he’s trying to figure them out. His handwriting is abhorrent - huge, jagged, all over the lines, and utterly illegible. 

“Forget it!” Penelope cries, when he snaps the tip on the pencil and has the nerve to ask her for another one. She yanks the soiled pages back with two fingers, and opens a large-sized resealable plastic bag to stow them in. She refused to take a chance that the inside of her book bag would smell like beef after this. 

FP watches her, amused. “You’re really serious about germs, huh?” 

“You are a germ!” Penelope hisses at him, her face boiling. She already knew that she was considered a freak and a social outcast beside FP’s laissez-faire popularity, he didn’t have to remind her that her every sensible action would be scrutinized and labelled as freakish by her peers. She’s about to give him an earful when Marty, still dedicated to moving around the room creating chaos, rushes by and snatches Ophelia out of her basket. 

“Hey Jones!” he yells, holding the egg up as Penelope gasps. The egg looks so small and breakable in Marty’s palm. “Sick egg!” 

“Hey!” FP’s up from his seat in a flash, towering over Marty. “Give it back, Mantle.” 

Marty is backing up almost to the teacher’s desk, miming a football throw. “You want it? Go long.” 

“No!” shrieks Penelope. Even if FP caught the egg at this distance, it wouldn’t survive the impact. She feels like crying. Inanimate or not, she was attached to Ophelia after a week of taking care of her. And she could kiss her dreams of a perfect mark goodbye if Marty messed this project up. 

FP takes a step toward Marty. Just then, the door of the classroom cracks open, and Kandinsky begins leading Harry and Nancy back through. Marty’s eyes flick to the door, and Penelope sees him make a decision a millisecond before it happens. 

She watches with horror as Marty throws the egg carelessly at FP. It shoots across the air at the front of the class, flying at top speed over three rows and toward the unforgiving edges of tables, desks, and linoleum. FP, eyes locked on the white projectile in ultimate concentration, opens both hands to catch. The egg flies into his palms and he draws it into his chest as he catches it, cushioning it against his sweatshirt. 

Penelope holds her breath, her eyes stinging from trying not to cry. FP opens his palms to show the egg, intact, and breathes a visible sigh of relief. 

“Asshole,” he spits at Marty as the shorter boy shoulders past. Penelope snatches Ophelia out of FP’s hands as soon as she can. Kandinsky, who had observed nothing of the crisis, frowns at FP for standing up, but seats himself at his desk without comment. 

“Is it okay?” FP asks quietly, dropping back into his seat. Penelope turns Ophelia over in her hands, tucking her carefully back into her bassinet after ascertaining that there was no damage. 

“Fine, no thanks to you.” She can feel her cheeks flaming, and gives FP her best glare. FP shrugs sullenly and folds his arms, putting his air of unaffected coolness back on. Penelope suddenly wants to apologize - he had saved the day, after all, and couldn’t be held responsible for everything his friends did - but she can’t find the words. 

When the bell rings, she keeps Ophelia’s basket cradled carefully against her chest. Working with FP was far more dangerous than she had ever imagined. 


	5. DAY SIX - PART TWO

“Detention!” Mary cries, attacking the blackboard with a wet rag. “I’ve never had detention before in my life!” 

“Chill out,” Fred observes. He’s sprawled out on one of the desks, legs dangling. “I’ve had detention tons of times. It’s nothing special.” 

Mary whirls around to face him, her hands on her hips. “I  _ know _ that you’ve had detention. You basically live your life in here. Teachers draw straws in the staff room to see who has to supervise you! You’ve probably spent more time in this room in your life than you have in your bed, asleep! That’s the difference between us, Fred. You are a juvenile delinquent, and I am a good student.” She punctuates each of the last two words with a hard smack at the chalkboard. 

Fred just watches her do it. “Being a good student isn’t everything, you know.” 

Mary wrings out the wet rag and imagines herself wringing out Fred’s balding head. “Pray tell,” she asks, through gritted teeth. “What is more important than our education?” 

“Having fun.” Fred says it like it’s obvious. “If you’re so obsessed with being a good student all the time, you’re going to miss out on all the fun in life. You’re going to get to your deathbed and realize you never had any fun, and then you’ll regret all the high school years you wasted with your nose in a book while people were having fun all around you.” 

“ _ You’re _ going to get to your deathbed and realize you wasted your life in a dead end, minimum wage job because you were too busy serving detentions to get your high school diploma.” 

“Fun,” Fred repeats in a deadpan voice. “Try it sometime.” 

“I have fun when I’m hitting you,” Mary growls. Fred gives an exaggerated bow. 

“Pleased to be of service.” 

Mary slaps annoyedly at the blackboard. “You realize we have to do this extra credit component now. Not only do we have to put our budget together, but we have to find time to go grocery shopping and plan a meal.” 

“So what? We’ll do it. It’s not the end of the world.” 

“It’s inconvenient!” Mary yells. 

Fred groans and lays back theatrically on the desk, his arms spread wide. “Why do you always take everything so seriously? You are way too worked up about this.” 

“Right,” Mary answers sarcastically. “Because why should I care about getting a good education?” 

“I’m getting an education. I just happen to be having fun while I’m at it. 

“Fun! What part of this is fun for you!? You’re lying on a desk, and I’m washing blackboards!” 

Fred winks at her. “Exactly. You’re the labour, and I’m the management.” 

In a split second, Mary fires the wet, dripping rag directly into his face. Fred winces as he pulls it out of his collar. The front of his shirt is soaked. “You always were a good shot,” he comments, wiping his face on his hand. 

“Always?” asks Mary suspiciously. 

“Yeah.” Fred flings the rag back into the bucket from a distance. “Dodgeball, softball, snowball fights, gym class. I always wondered why you didn’t go out for the baseball team.” 

“Because I'd have to see you,” Mary deadpans. Fred laughs. “Stop laughing when I insult you.” 

Fred folds his arms and gives her a toothy grin. “I think you like me. You know how boys tease the girls that they like? You beat me up so often that I’m forced to accept you’re obsessed with me.” 

Mary grits her teeth. “Boys do that because they internalize a sexist unconscious bias from their earliest days at preschool that gives them a monopoly on brutish, idiotic behaviour. And I do not like you. I find you abhorrent. You have the personality of a wet fart.” 

Fred laughs again. “That’s not why I did it.” 

“Did what?” 

“Teased you.” He swings his legs off the desk and looks down, intent on studying his untied shoelaces and the pattern on the tile. “We used to be friends when we were kids.” 

“Friends! You wrote me hate Valentines every February and tied my shoelaces together!” 

“Yeah, but as friends.” He glances up at her, chewing on a thumbnail. “Why aren’t we like that anymore?” 

Mary snorts. “You got popular, in case you don’t remember.” 

“Doesn’t mean we can’t be friends.” 

“Forget it, Fred.” Mary claps two chalkboard erasers together, unleashing a cloud of dust. “You’re one of the popular crew now. You sit at the cool table in the cafeteria and have a date every Saturday. You hang out with cool kids and cheerleaders. I’m a nerd, and you’re a jock, and never the twain shall meet. I’m sure you’ll think of me when you’re old and balding and fat and realize you peaked in high school.” 

“Why do you care who I date?” Fred asks. Mary ignores him. “You make it sound like I’ve dated hundreds of girls.” 

“Haven’t you?” Mary ticks them off on her fingers. “Samantha. Rebecca. Hermione. Crystal. Bethany.”

Fred watches her, amused. “You _ are  _ popular too, you know. You’re just more of an Elizabeth.” 

“Come again?”

“In Sun Valley High. Elizabeth is the serious, responsible twin, but she still likes to have fun. She still goes to parties and goes on dates and everything, and everyone likes her.” 

“Why do you read books made for preadolescent girls?”

“Why are you so wedded to the tight constraints of gender?” Fred fires back. 

“Me! You’re a male chauvinist!” 

“Well, you’ve got a stick up your ass!” 

Some perverse part of Mary is glad that she’d made him yell - Fred’s cheerfulness in the face of her anger was almost unbearably annoying. Glaring at him, she picks up her rag and continues to clean. “Are you going to help me with this, or not? This is your punishment too, you know.” 

“You never listen to me,” Fred sulks. “But fine.” He scoops a cloth out of the bucket and slaps it onto the dirty blackboard. “Forget I said anything.” 

* * *

“Your child is acting out in school, and you’ve been warned several times by their teacher that they’re on the brink of suspension,” Penelope reads. She and FP are in the school library after classes, making slow progress through the list of parenting questions. “Do you, A) consult a child psychologist, B) implement firmer discipline, or C) other.” 

“Easy,” says FP, and Penelope nods. 

“I agree.” 

“B,” answers FP, at the same time as Penelope says “A”. FP throws his hands in the air in annoyance. 

“Firmer discipline!” The term makes Penelope’s head swim with images of the orphanage where she’d grown up - a ruler being brought sharply down over knuckles and the cold, damp stone corners where misbehaving children would be sent to tremble. “I don’t believe you. You - you brute! How could you advocate for that sort of thing!” 

“Oh, what’s a child psychologist going to do?” FP bickers. “We tell the kid to smarten up, or else.” 

“A psychologist could help! Could help instead of resorting to corporal punishment.” 

“I don’t even know what that means.” 

“It means hitting her!” Penelope retorts sharply. FP suddenly pounds the table between them with a fist, rattling their notebooks and causing all of Penelope’s pencils to leap off the wood. 

“I would never, never NEVER HIT MY KID!” he yells, the tendons standing out on his neck. Penelope backs up into her chair, suddenly terrified of his vehemence. It’s the most animated she’s ever seen FP about this assignment: his face is red and his eyes bulging. He’s lucky the library is empty - this kind of outburst would get them thrown out in a heartbeat. “Stop putting words in my mouth! I never said  _ hit, _ I would never  _ fucking  _ do that!” 

Penelope’s too awestruck to speak. She’s never seen FP scream like that before, unless it was at the referee during a football game. FP sits leaning toward her, breathing heavily, drawing slowly back into himself as he casts his eyes back down to the floor. He snorts and scrubs at his face, effectively putting the mask of a lazy student back on. 

“Whatever. Write whatever you want.” He glances furtively around at the empty desks and shelves. “I’m never having kids, so it doesn’t matter.” 

“Is there a problem here?” The librarian stops at the edge of their table, frowning down at them over a stack of books. “If you two can’t keep your voices down, you’ll have to leave.” 

“Sorry,” FP mumbles. Penelope waits as she clicks away on her high heels before she speaks up again. 

“I am,” she says quietly. “Having kids.” Her tongue is dry and her voice is very small. FP rolls his eyes and folds his arms, obstinately returning to the bored gestures he’d perfected during classes at school. 

“Bully for you.” 

“I am,” repeats Penelope softly, spurred into honesty by his outburst. “I put botanist as my career, but it doesn’t really matter. I’m going to be married as soon as I graduate from college, and my parents will probably choose all my classes. I get a scholarship to Highsmith no matter what my grades are, and my parents will pay for everything else. I figure I’ll declare a major in my second year. Then when I graduate I’ll go on to be a wife and mother instead of getting a job. I’ll raise my kids here in town.” 

“I guess you have everything planned out,” FP replies dryly, and Penelope realizes he’s under the impression that all of this is by choice. FP chews on a hangnail, looking away from her. “Sorry I yelled at you.” The words are garbled out of his mouth, like he isn’t used to apologizing. 

Penelope shrugs, trying not to stare at him. She knew that people were unnerved when she stared. “Doesn’t matter. My mom yells at me all the time.” 

“Yeah?” FP glances up and their eyes meet. For a moment Penelope sees a hint of something in his eyes that makes her think he’s about to speak, but he just looks down at his fingers again. The hangnail he’s been fiddling with has started to bleed. 

“I’ll put C,” Penelope speaks slowly. “We can finish this later.” 

“Do what you want,” FP replies. Then, as though abruptly answering an unspoken question: “My dad threw me out this year. He’s basically disowned me. I can do whatever I want after I graduate.” 

It’s the strangest thing, but for that split second, Penelope’s jealous of him. Then the horror sets in - someone their age living on their own was completely unheard of. She couldn’t even begin to imagine what would become of her if she were ever disowned - would she have to go back to the Sisters of Quiet Mercy? She certainly didn’t have any friends she could stay with. She watches FP with shock. 

“But..where do you live?” she asks. 

FP lifts his shoulders in a shrug. “There are a lot of empty trailers at Sunnyside,” he explains in a low voice. “The rent’s cheap. I pay water and electricity, and the guy who owns it looks the other way if I don’t make rent.” 

It explained why he knew how much to budget for hydro. “But why not go to college?” Penelope asks. “After graduation? I’m sure you could get a scholarship.” 

“Because I don’t plan that far.” FP shrugs again, and Penelope suddenly recognizes his cooler-than-thou apathy for what it surely is: a deep and dark depression. “I don’t think I’m gonna live long enough to have kids and everything. No offense.” 

Penelope sits quietly with the words. She’s never heard someone speak so matter-of-factly about their own demise, yet something she’ll never admit is that she’s had the same kind of thoughts herself. Her absence from the world was hardly as inevitable to her as it seemed to FP, but sometimes the thought of not dying exactly, but ceasing to exist before the fulfillment of her destiny became attractive to her, and then she quickly shut those thoughts away. 

FP keeps chewing on one of her pens. “Look, forget it. You just finish the questionnaire. We can’t agree on anything, anyway.” 

It’s true - they’ve been arguing about every single question. Penelope tugs nervously on the end of her braid. Earlier it had occurred to her to snap at FP for putting her writing utensils in his mouth - now she couldn’t bring herself to mind as much. FP never had a pen of his own anyway. 

“I should go,” FP says, standing and swinging his ratty backpack over one shoulder. His football duffle bag is almost humorously new and clean in contrast - he swings it over the other shoulder and the embroidered yellow name on the blue fabric catches the light. “Football practice. Besides, we’re going to get thrown out soon.” 

“Okay,” replies Penelope, tongue-tied. She watches him leave with a feeling of dismay and confusion. Her heart feels heavy with concern, and she had the unbearable feeling that something had almost happened that she couldn’t yet understand - something she should have handled better. 

Maybe she and FP were more alike than she had originally thought. 

* * *

Alice has her feet up on her dad’s coffee table, a cigarette just lit and a diet coke halfway to her mouth, when the sound of someone hammering away at the trailer door interrupts her relaxation. With a grunt of annoyance, she swings her Doc Martens off the coffee table and goes to answer. 

“He’s not here,” she says as she opens the door, expecting to come face-to-face with one of her father’s serpent buddies. Instead, to her shock, she’s confronted with an impeccably dressed Hiram Lodge, who barrels into her home like he lives there. 

“OK. I’ve read the manual that Mr. Kandinsky recommended. And I have a list of husband and fatherly duties that I have to attend to. I’ve already finished our questionnaire and budget so I think it’s time I spent some quality time with the children.” He looks up for the first time, eyes narrowing as he takes in the four walls of her trailer. A smirk travels up the corner of his mouth. “You live here? How quaint.” 

“Hiram, what are you doing here?” Alice snaps. 

“I’ve come for our baby.” 

“You mean our egg?” Alice asks dryly. 

“Alice! As long as the project is ongoing, we refer to it as our baby. You really ought to start taking this more seriously if you expect to get anything out of it. Now, where did you put him?” Hiram gasps theatrically. “Are you smoking in the house?” 

Alice lifts her cigarette to her lips and exhales a plume of smoke into Hiram’s face. “What tipped you off?” 

“Secondhand smoke is dangerous for babies!” Hiram snatches the cigarette from her fingers and throws it into the sink, cranking the water at full blast. Alice stares at her empty hand, wondering if she should start dismembering him from the top or the bottom. “You’re lucky I was here. Now, what if-” 

Hiram gasps again. Alice had carefully balanced Sebastian on the kitchen counter next to some empties. “Ah ha!” He snatches the blue-stickered egg up into his hands. “I had a feeling something like this might happen if I left you unsupervised. The parenting books I read said that unfit mothers can prove a serious danger to their own children.” Hiram cradles the egg protectively. “You know how delicate he is! Suppose he had fallen!” 

“The only delicate thing here is your grip on reality,” Alice fumes. “Trust me, we all knew you were going to snap. I just didn’t think it would be over  _ this _ .” 

Hiram cuts her off, ignoring her words entirely. “I can’t believe how irresponsible you’d be with the miracle of life. Luckily I came prepared.” He pulls a black carrier out of his shoulder bag and displays it to Alice. It had the same shape as the bassinets the other groups had prepared, only this one was made of a dark, rich leather. “I had it specially made. It’s soft and protective, unlike those harsh materials the other groups are using. One hundred percent organic.” 

Alice pinches her forehead. “Hiram, the egg-”

“The baby-”

“The egg was perfectly safe-” 

“For now! Today you leave the egg lying on the table. The next day you leave it unattended in its stroller outside the Val-U-Mart. Then it’s just a hop skip and a jump to leaving it next to a live electrical wire with a fork in its hand while you’re snorting a mountain of cocaine!” 

“I like that in this fantasy world you think I can afford cocaine,” Alice replies dryly. 

Hiram sniffs haughtily. “I’d offer you some, but I’m off all substances. I think our child needs at least one parent it can count on, don’t you?” 

Alice grits her teeth. “Hiram, just take the damn baby and get out. You can keep it for the rest of the project if you want.” 

“While I would love to, the parenting book says the baby needs to socialize with both of its parents. I’ll be back to drop him off after his swimming lesson on Thursday.” Hiram moves self-importantly to the door, Sebastian now tucked into his jaunty carrier. Hiram winds his thin silk scarf around his neck, and casts a disgusted glance around the rest of the trailer. “Would you clean up this dump, please? Sebastian is going to get lost in all the clutter.” 

“I wish you’d get lost!” Alice deadpans. Hiram puts on a smirk. 

“You realize your clever retorts are a defense mechanism to cover up your insecurities about first-time parenting. It’s all in here.” He taps the parenting book, which is sticking out the top of his bag. “Why don’t I leave it with you? You clearly need it more than me.” 

Alice gives him the stink eye. She could only imagine her father’s face if he came home and found her engrossed in  _ Parenting for Teens. _ “Hiram, I’m giving you until ten to get out.” 

“Your temper is really concerning me, Alice. Do you know how negatively children react to displays of temper? It’s one of the top ten warning signs that you’ll be an emotionally damaging mother to your children.” 

“One…” Alice counts. “Two…” 

“I’ll just leave it right here.” Hiram sets the book down on the small table next to the door. “Then again, I think it’s clear Sebastian can’t depend on his mother anyway. There are some things you can’t learn from a book. Good thing I’m so naturally gifted at this parenting thing.” 

“..Ten!”

“Fine. I’m going, I’m going.” Hiram peers out the small peephole to ascertain that his driver is waiting. He wasn’t anxious to walk through the trailer park alone. “But think about what I said. And consider laying off the booze.” 

He closes the door quickly before Alice can throw anything at his head. This parenting thing was getting hazardous. 

* * *

“Child psychology is a very valid field!” Sierra argues. “Child psychologists do years of work specializing in the child’s mind, and they can prompt breakthroughs in behavioural strategy that parents could almost never achieve on their own!” 

“Sure,” replies Tom, his arms folded. The two of them are out for dinner at a seafood restaurant in Greendale, picking up the earlier argument that they’d had in the car. “But it sounds like it costs a hell of a lot more than just telling your kid to get in line.” 

“The cost is not the point,” protests Sierra. “The point is that acting up is a cry for help, and a psychologist could do far more to help a vulnerable kid than a parent could.” 

“That’s dumb.” Tom looks at Sierra’s thunderstruck expression and backs down. “Okay, you’re right. Let’s not argue about this. I’ll go to a psychologist with her.” 

Sierra spears a piece of shrimp with her fork and frowns. “You’re doing it again.” 

“Doing what?” Tom pulls a bread roll out of the center basket and breaks it in half. 

“Agreeing with me!” Sierra throws her hands in the air in annoyance. “Every time we disagree on this stuff you act like you have something to say, and then you end up just conceding to my opinion. Tell me what you have to say if it’s so important.” 

“I do agree with you! The psychologist is fine!” 

“No!” Sierra jabs the paper with her finger. “You said B. And now you’re changing it.” 

Tom stares at her incredulously. “Let me get this straight. You’re mad that I agree with you!?” 

“All the time! No matter what! It’s like I can’t have a conversation with you anymore.” 

“Working on this project is the only time we get to be together,” Tom argues. “I just don’t want us to waste our time fighting like everyone else!” 

“Well, I don’t want to be married to a wimp who can’t stand up for himself.” Sierra snaps. No sooner have the words left her mouth than she regrets it. She was never this harsh with Tom. 

“A wimp, huh?” There’s humour in Tom’s voice, but it’s slightly tight and wobbly, as though he’s angry. 

Sierra stares out the wide window above the booth. Across the parking lot, the Greendale woods look dark and menacing in the twilight. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it.” 

“This isn’t about the project, is it?” Tom reaches out and tugs on her sleeve. “Hey. Sweetheart.” 

His chest aches when Sierra turns to face him. Sierra was the most beautiful girl in the world. If possible, the tears clinging to her eyelashes made her look even prettier. But the sight sunk Tom’s heart like a stone. 

Sierra reaches for her glass and takes a long drink of her water, her hand shaking slightly. “When are we going to tell people the truth about us?” 

“What people?” Tom asks. “Our friends, or…?” 

“Our families, I mean.” 

“We tried that once, remember? It didn’t go over well.” 

Tom and Sierra had started dating at the beginning of the year, but their parents had expressly forbidden them to continue the relationship. They had both lied and told their parents they had broken up, meeting secretly during and outside of school and going on dates in Greendale. Tom’s parents were under the impression he was dating a girl named Courtney, from Cross Hill. Sierra’s believed she was too preoccupied with her schoolwork for romance. 

Sierra picks at her food. “I think my parents would come around. I want to tell my sisters, at least. I hate having to lie to them every time I go out with you. I’ve used the same story so many times that they’re going to catch on.” 

Tom swallows hard. “We have to be careful. If one person tells, then it’s going to spread like wildfire.” 

“But they’re my  _ family.  _ I thought we were going to try to talk to them again. I thought that was the plan.” 

“That is the plan. One day. But right now isn't a good time. And honestly, with my dad, I don’t know if it’s ever going to be a good time.” 

“But I’m sick of this!” Sierra explodes. “Eating in Greendale! I don’t even want to think about how much gas you waste driving us up here every time. I make you drop me off around the block in the pouring rain, and I have to wait freezing my ass off in the school parking lot when we want to go out. We can’t even hold hands at school!” 

Tom reaches across the table and takes her hand, a lump in his throat threatening to choke him. “Sierra, I’m sorry. I love you.” 

She meets his gaze, her eyes stormy. “But not enough to tell your dad the truth.” 

Tom swallows. “Have you ever thought about what would happen if we actually got married? Neither of us are done with school. We’re not even financially stable. My parents wouldn’t help me, not if they knew I was marrying you. You love your family, and this would tear them apart. We both want to go to college. I can’t ask you to give that up. If my parents disowned me, I couldn’t give you anything that you deserve.” 

“I’m not asking you to marry me now. I’m not asking you to give me anything.” 

“I know.” Tom’s thumb rubs circles on her hand. “Let’s just wait it out.” 

“But I don’t want to do this anymore.” Sierra flicks her hair back from her face, her eyes red. “We can’t go anywhere in public together. We can’t even kiss at the movies. We’re constantly worrying about who's going to see us.” She looks around the restaurant. “Everyone stares at us here, because I’m black and you’re white. Everyone stares at us back home, because they know our parents hate each other. We can’t go anywhere without being scrutinized.” 

“What are you saying? That we’d be happier apart?” 

“No!” Sierra yells at him. She buries her face in her hands. “It feels so hopeless. I didn’t even know if I wanted to get married. But this project is making me think about what I want with the rest of my life, and I want-” 

“What?” asks Tom. 

Sierra looks at him through her splayed fingers. “I want you, Tom. I want to marry you. And it fucking terrifies me.” 


	6. DAY EIGHT

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw for child abuse mention
> 
> can you tell im running out of steam lmao why did i start thisss

“Hey! How about this!” Fred rushes down the grocery store aisle on Wednesday afternoon and waves a can at Mary, skidding in his untied sneakers. Catching up to her, he thrusts the can proudly into her hand. “This says it’s nutritious, grain-free, and has twice the daily recommended amount of protein.” 

Mary checks the label and immediately shoves the can back into her partner’s chest. “This is dog food!” 

“Mm-mm.” Fred pats his flat stomach, flashing her with a toothpaste-commercial smile. “Nutritious and delicious.” 

“Fred!” Mary grabs a head of lettuce out of the produce bin and hurls it into their cart. “We are not feeding dog food to our baby!” 

A few shoppers turn to look at them in concern. Fred laughs and turns his disarming smile on them until the couple looks away. 

“Could you keep your voice down?” he snarks to Mary in a whisper. “You’re going to get us in trouble again.” 

“Me!?” 

Fred rattles a box of instant noodles at her. “How about Pan Burger Partner?” 

Mary rips it out of his hand and flings the box back in the direction it came from. “You are driving me insane,” she mutters through gritted teeth, shoving the grocery cart down the aisle. The one broken wheel lets out a whine as she moves it toward the end of the row with sheer force. “We are supposed to be finding something nutritious to go with my ambrosia salad.” 

“Here’s something.” Fred grabs a whole package of twinkies off of the shelf. “For dessert.” 

“Fred, can you please take this seriously!” Mary yells, stamping her foot. The two of them had been in the small grocery store on Main Street for almost forty-five minutes. “We should be done by now!” 

Fred pouts and drops the twinkies into the cart. “Come on. I am taking it seriously. Can’t we have some fun while we do it?” 

“Your idea of fun is making me flunk this entire class!” 

“If you have straight A’s everywhere else, you’re not in danger of flunking. Even if we bombed this, you’d probably end up with a B.” 

“Chicken!” Mary screams. She points one finger toward the back of the store, where the meats were kept. “I’ve decided. We’re making chicken. Even you couldn’t mess that up too badly. Go get some, and get out of my hair.” 

Fred purses his lips at her, looking like he has something else to say. Mary tries to shove the cart with the broken wheel another foot and mutters a curse word under her breath. 

“I can get you a new cart,” Fred speaks up, rising up and down on the balls of his toes. Fred had so much excess energy that hanging out with him always felt like babysitting. “You’d think if you were such an A student you’d have the sense not to grab one with a busted wheel.” 

Mary makes a fist at him. Fred balks. 

“Chicken and a new cart,” he calls out, rounding the corner away from her. “Coming right up!” 

Once he’s gone, Mary finds the rest of what she needs in relative peace. She had no intention of waiting around for Fred to get back - knowing him, he’d be waylaid by the first girl who batted her eyelashes at him. She’s hovering in the spice aisle, trying to figure out the difference between parsley and coriander, when the rattle of grocery cart wheels and the slapping of sneakers gets her attention. 

“Yeehaw!” Fred Andrews, in full toddler mode, takes a running start down the aisle and leaps onto the back of the cart, the grocery cart rolling past her in a blur and rattling over the tile floor. He steps down to avoid a display of tomatoes, turning around at the end of the row and beginning to push the cart back toward her, gaining speed as he does. 

“Stop clowning around!” Mary yells as he flies past her. Infuriated, she reaches out and grabs the back of Fred’s collar, yanking him hard off of the fast-moving grocery cart and in a heap to the floor. The cart, however, keeps rolling - shooting straight into a huge display of egg cartons with a crash. Mary watches in horror as the display folds in on itself, sending the three topmost cartons of eggs tumbling to the floor to smash into a yellow puddle. 

“Who’s responsible for this?” The shop owner swoops in on them as Mary stares at the destruction in shock, Fred still sprawled on his ass next to her feet. “Are you from Riverdale High?” he asks Mary, folding his arms over his chest. “I’m going to need your name.” 

Mary can only open and close her mouth, desperately trying to find something to say. “It wasn’t her fault,” Fred speaks up, climbing to his feet and dusting his knees off. “My name’s Fred Andrews, I’m from Riverdale High. It was my fault. She didn’t do anything wrong. I can clean it up if you show me where the mops are.” 

“You’re certainly right you’ll clean it up.” The grocer is incensed. “You’re Artie Andrews’ boy, aren’t you? I’ll be having a talk with your father, young man.” 

Fred turns quickly to Mary, pressing a package of chicken thighs into her hand. “Sorry,” he says sincerely. “I’ll meet you at the checkout.” 

Mary suddenly feels too tongue-tied to speak. She watches as the grocer fastens one authoritative hand in the back of Fred’s shirt collar and leads him back toward the swinging doors that led to the back room. 

What in the world had made him take the blame? Sure, it was the decent thing to do, but it required a degree of maturity that Mary had always assumed was far above him. She pushes the cart slowly back toward the front of the store, finishing the shopping at her own pace, trying not to think about how Fred had come to her rescue, or how Fred definitely would have stopped the cart in time if she hadn’t let her temper get the better of her. 

When she finally reaches the cash, Fred’s done cleaning - he’s scrutinizing the chocolate display under the watchful gaze of the elderly shop owner. 

“Let me do that,” Fred offers when she starts unpacking the groceries. 

“Why,” Mary shoots back on instinct, “because I’m a girl?” 

“No.” Fred scratches the back of his head awkwardly. “I just thought it’s the least I could do since you had to do all the shopping.” 

“Oh.” Mary falls silent. For some reason she feels awkward too. Fred doesn’t say anything as he empties the contents of their cart onto the conveyor belt, careful to place the eggs and bread at the very end. 

_ He got what he deserved _ , Mary tells herself as Fred digs out some money from his pockets to add to hers.  _ He did the bare minimum to be a decent human. Don’t go getting all warm and fuzzy over it.  _

But she can’t help herself. “Sorry if I got you in trouble,” she offers as they step out into the sunshine, hefting a paper bag of groceries higher into her arms. No sooner are the words out of her mouth than she cringes inwardly. Why was _ she _ apologizing? Idiot! 

“No problem.” Fred grins at her. “I’m always in trouble.” 

That was true. Fred swings the bag of groceries from his wrist and pretends to contemplate her. 

“I want to know what you have against eggs though.” He laughs out loud. “What’s in ambrosia anyway? More eggs? Boy, will we be in trouble.” 

Mary glares at him. She’d long considered it the most infuriating part of Fred’s character than he laughed obnoxiously when you were trying to be mean to him. It was like no insult or glare was pointed enough to penetrate his thick skull and pea-sized neanderthal brain. 

“You’ll like it,” replies Mary instead, speeding up her pace so that Fred has to hurry to keep up. 

“You sound like my mom. I guess you’re practicing for when Belinda’s older, right?” 

“Belinda’s more mature than you, and she hasn’t even hatched yet.” Mary retorts huffily. Still, she keeps striding ahead of Fred on the sidewalk so that he has to struggle to follow her.  At the same time, she lets her hair fall into her face, effectively obscuring any trace of the smile she’s trying to hide. 

If she was honest with herself, bickering with Fred was almost fun sometimes. 

Almost. 

* * *

“Thanks for helping me with this article,” says Hal, sitting back on the Coopers’ blue-upholstered sofa with a pencil tucked adorably behind his ear. He stretches and yawns, and Alice tries not to be distracted by the sliver of skin that shows at his waistband. 

“Anything to get away from Hiram,” she replies dryly, helping herself to one of Prudence Cooper’s oatmeal-chocolate-chip cookies. The coffee table between them is laid out with enough snacks to feed an army. “You have no idea how nice it is not to think about marriage for awhile.” 

Hal groans in sympathy. “I never want to see another egg again. You have no idea how angry Hermione is that we accidentally broke ours.” He leans forward and uses another pencil to make a slight edit to the copy they’d been proofing for the Blue and Gold. “She thinks I did it on purpose because I didn’t like the stickers!” 

Alice smiles despite herself. “You were pretty pissed about the stickers.” 

“It’s supposed to be a baby! Not an art project.” Hal holds out an imaginary reporters’ microphone to his girlfriend. “Tell me, how does it feel to be one of the only groups who hasn’t killed their baby yet?” 

Out of the fourteen groups in their class, only a few remained who hadn’t yet lost an egg. Mary and Fred were up to a record-breaking four. Alice laughs and pushes her hair out of her eyes, batting Hal’s hand away. 

“Seriously, I don’t even want to talk about it. Hiram’s like the devil, lately. Say his name and he appears.” 

Hal obediently pretends to zip his lips. Alice hides a smile and ducks her head back to her paper. 

“So, the interview with Coach Clayton-” 

_ Ding-dong!  _

Hal’s brow furrows as he glances at the door. “I’m not expecting anyone. My mom’s not even in.” He waves off Alice’s furrowed brow. “Probably some salesman. Anyway, I thought we’d use the interview at the end-” 

_ Ding-dong!  _

Hal rises from the sofa and stands up enough to look out the living room window. Alice, with a growing sense of trepidation, stays put. 

“What’s Hiram doing here?” Hal plants his hands on his hips as he stares through the glass, looking disturbingly like his mom. “I thought he had some tennis match or something today.” 

Hiram! Alice would like to crack his head like an egg. “I’m not here!” Alice declares immediately, dropping to her hands and knees and crawling behind the sofa. “Get rid of him!” 

“Alice, don’t go on the floor-” 

“Your mom’s floor is cleaner than a doctor’s office. Just go get rid of him!” It was her turn to babysit Sebastian, and she and Hal had left their eggs sitting on the Coopers’ kitchen table while they worked. Alice had no doubt that was what Hiram had come for. He hadn’t left her alone all week. “I’m never getting a divorce. This joint custody thing is a nightmare.” 

She watches from beneath the legs of the coffee table as Hal’s socked feet move towards the front door. He unhooks the chain, and Alice squeezes her eyes briefly shut as the door cracks open. 

“Hiram!” Alice cringes at Hal’s faux-casual voice. Hal couldn’t lie if you held a gun to his head. “What’s up, man?” 

“Is she here?” Hiram’s feet move purposefully into the front foyer, and Hal’s arm is just a bit too slow to keep him on the porch. Alice grits her teeth. “I’m here to pick up our son. I got him a new carrier. I thought he might have outgrown the old one.” 

“No one’s here.” Hal tries to block Hiram from entering, but Hiram slips past him yet again. Alice wants to punch her boyfriend. What was the use of dating such a well-built guy if he couldn’t keep his short friend away from her for two seconds? 

Hiram laughs - a sound that’s quickly becoming one of Alice’s least favourite sounds in the world. “Come on Hal, do you think I’m an idiot? Her hideous shoes are right here.” 

Alice curses herself for dumping her Doc Martens in the Coopers’ front hall. Hiram sniffs haughtily. “Besides, I can smell her cheap cherry body spray.” 

That did it. Alice starts crawling furiously towards the kitchen, as silent as he can move on her hands and knees. She was going to take refuge in the basement until this was all over. Maybe she’d even slip out the back door. 

But she’s too slow. “There you are!” Hiram exclaims, ducking under Hal’s arm and catching her halfway into the kitchen. “Why haven’t you been returning my calls? I haven’t talked to you about Sebastian’s trust fund yet! And-” 

“Hiram, take the egg and go away!” Alice snaps. Despite being the one found crouching on the floor, her indignance boils over. “I’m not in the mood!” 

As she’s come to expect, Hiram acts like she hadn’t even spoken. “I was reading this book,” he announces, brandishing yet another parenting book at her. A brand new leather carrier is slung over his left arm, adorned with some intricate design and embossed with a logo she doesn’t recognize. “ _ What to Expect When You’re Expecting. _ ” 

“We’re not expecting!” Alice rages, getting back to her feet. Hiram rifles through the crisp new baby book, absorbed in its pages. 

“Honestly, it’s a shock I turned out so well. My parents didn’t do any of the things in this book. But I thought you could use it. You’re definitely not winning any mother-of-the-year awards as it is.” 

Alice snatches the book and the carrier out of his hands. “I swear, if I didn’t know better, I’d think you laid the stupid thing yourself. I’ll get your stupid egg, and then you two can go far away from here!” 

She stomps out of the living room, letting the kitchen door slam satisfyingly behind her. Alice swings the carrier up onto the kitchen and plunks it down in a rage. To her horror, the very edge of the carrier taps the side of the blue-stickered egg. It begins to roll very slowly toward the edge of the counter. 

“No,” Alice whispers. Her hand flashes up as the egg teeters on the edge. There was no way. Not when Hiram had just been calling her a horrible mother. No way was she about to prove him right. 

The egg leaps over the edge of the counter as if it had jumped and explodes onto the pristine white-tiled floor. 

“Fuck,” Alice moans, bending down to survey the mess. She didn’t have much time. 

To her relief, yanking on the fridge door reveals a whole bowl of eggs. Thank God for Prudence Cooper and her meticulously organized kitchen. 

The sticker on the egg was still intact. Alice grabbed it out of the mess and plastered it quickly on an egg from the fridge, wiping up the shattered egg as quickly as she could. The paper towels she buried in the garbage. She tucked the new egg into the new leather carrier and arranged the sticker so it was facing out. 

Alice anxiously puts an ear to the closed door, straining to hear if Hiram or Hal had noticed the noise. They’re deep in conversation - Hal is speaking to Hiram in a low whisper. 

“Dude, I really like Alice. We just got alone together. Do you think you could-” 

Hiram lets out a rude laugh in reply, not even bothering to keep his voice down. “Alice? Please, Hal, you have better taste than that. Besides, don’t even  _ think  _ about having kids with her.” 

The squeak of the kitchen door being thrown open silences them both at once. “Here,” Alice says stiffly, walking across the room to present Hiram with the leather bassinet. “We’re done everything but the summary. If you want to make any changes, you have my blessing, so long as I get to look at them before class.” 

Hiram squints at the egg. “He looks different.” 

“Man, don’t do this,” Hal moans, inadvertently saving the day. Alice relaxes a little. “That’s your egg. Get out.” 

Hiram purses his lips and looks haughtily from one to the other. “Fine. I know when I’m not wanted.” He draws the folds of his black cape closed around his neck. “ _ What to Expect When You’re Expecting  _ says-” 

But Alice never finds out. She shoves him out the door before Hiram can say another word, and slams the Coopers’ front door right in his face. 

* * *

“Do you have a crush on Mary?” 

FP jumps about a foot in his chair, his dark brown eyes snapping up to meet Penelope’s. He grunts at her - the most communicative he’s been all afternoon. “Mary?” he mumbles, scratching awkwardly at his ear. He looks genuinely baffled. “Why Mary?” 

Penelope looks around the school library in what she imagines to be a tactful way before turning back to him, tightening her red ponytail as she does. “You’re always looking over at them during class.” 

FP makes a disgusted noise in the back of his throat, but Penelope notices the tips of his ears turning pink. “I don’t have a crush on Mary.” 

Penelope thinks it over. He seems to be telling the truth. “I wouldn’t tell anyone if you did,” she assures him, regardless. Once upon a time, Penelope had tried to make friends by spreading gossip - but she had quickly learned that that just made people dislike her more. Her position in the school’s social hierarchy was iron-clad and immovable: a complete and utter loser. 

Still, being nice to the popular kids could only help, not hurt. She forces a laugh and turns back to the final draft of their questionnaire. “Well, the alternative was you having a crush on Fred, so I didn’t think it was that.” 

FP’s hand inexplicably curls into a fist. Penelope glances up at the motion to notice that both of his hands are squeezed in fists - so tightly that they’re shaking. She slowly raises her head to look him in the eye and finds her attention abruptly caught by something else entirely. She holds back a gasp of surprise. 

“What’s that?” Penelope’s hand reaches for the side of FP’s face, which up until now had been obscured under the hood of his football sweatshirt. FP jerks away from her hand, though she’d been nowhere near touching him. He scowls. 

“Nothing.” His hand comes up and cups his left ear, his eyes looking anywhere but her face. One of his eyes has a dark red splotch in it - a broken blood vessel. “Are we done this shit, or what?” 

Penelope understood more than anyone that people had secrets, and that there was a certain clout that came with being a football player- but there was no need to be rude. She sits back and importantly straightens the papers in front of her. 

“We are done with everything except for the final summary,” she replies tactfully, deciding not to comment on his cursing. “I’ve already offered to finish that myself, so when you provide me your answers to the reflection questions I will incorporate them into my own.” 

“I didn’t do them,” FP replies curtly, almost cutting off the end of her words. He pushes his chair back with a squeal. “Just make something up for me. You’re smart. So are we done?” 

Penelope sighs. Every time they came close to having a nice time together, FP started pulling away and treating her like an annoying nuisance. Penelope might be unpopular, but she was hardly the nuisance in this pairing. She pulls Ophelia’s basket towards herself and straightens the ribbon on the handle, watching FP out of the corner of her eye. She could have sworn she’d seen something on his face - a coarse patch of skin that was red and angry. She points at it again. 

“Is that a scar?” 

“You don’t let up, do you?” FP growls. For some reason he’s on edge now - the muscles tense and the veins popping out on his arms. He yanks his hood down and turns his head so that she’s faced with the left side of his handsome face. His inner ear is coated with dried blood, and his temple and jaw are splotched with shiny, torn patches of skin. Penelope gasps out loud and covers her mouth. On instinct both Penelope and FP turn to look around - but the only other couple in the library, Tom and Sierra, pays them no mind. 

Penelope leans closer, lowering her voice to a whisper. “Is that a….” 

“Gift from my old man,” says FP, who’s clearly decided to go the macho bravado route. He folds his arms, his eyes dark and unreadable. Most of the damage is hidden under his hair, but looking straight on, the injury is obvious. FP speaks as casually as if discussing the weather. “We had a disagreement last night. He decided to introduce my face to the burner on the stove.” 

Penelope can only stare at him. She knew that parents abused their kids - anyone who sat through Principal Featherhead’s beginning-of-term assemblies or passed the billboard outside the health room knew that. But she’d never met anyone for whom it was true - and so violently true, at that. Her complaints about her own parents, always so useful when commiserating in these situations, disappear. How could she complain about Rose’s strict curfews or even the path laid out for her after high school when faced with this? 

“FP, I-” Penelope stutters in surprise. “I don’t know what to say.” 

“You’re not going to say anything.” FP keeps his arms folded, a muscle pulsing in his jaw as he keeps looking at her with those cool, cool eyes. “If I hear you’ve told a single person about this, you’re going to be sorry. You’re going to forget I told you anything.” 

Penelope ignores being threatened - she got enough of that from Hermione in gym class, and Rose at home, to pay it any mind. “I won’t say anything,” she promises, her mouth cotton-dry. “But you should-” 

FP huffs through his nose. “Now you sound like Mary.” 

_ He does have a crush on Mary, _ Penelope thinks. Terrifyingly, FP seems to read her mind. He leans forward, his gory ear exposed. 

“No,” says FP firmly, his eyes narrowed into slits. “I don’t have a crush on her.” 

He stands up, pulling his hood back over his head and gathering the lone eraser and crumbly bunch of loose cigarettes that he’d bothered to bring to their meeting. Among them was a single pencil, sharpened down to the metal ferrule. He shoves the whole mess in the pocket of his hoodie and picks up his bag. 

“You finish the summary and then we’re done, right?” FP keeps his voice low, at library-level, but there's a coarse unhappiness behind it that’s closer to fury. “ _ Fuck _ ,” he mutters darkly. “Of all the fucking people it had to be you. Of  _ fucking  _ course.” 

“What does that mean?” Penelope speaks up, sounding braver than she feels. 

FP snorts and lightly kicks a leg of the desk. “Everyone knows that anything you get told you spread all over town. You’re going to go telling everything.” 

“I do not!” Penelope replies, a hot spike of indignation blotting out her fear. “I gave you my word. I am not a liar, and I am not a gossip. I am incredibly trustworthy, and my word means exactly that. And I  _ don’t  _ appreciate you swearing!” She stands from the table, refusing to let him leave, surprised by her own forcefulness. “Sit down!” 

FP glares at her for a second, and then hurls himself back into his chair, crossing his arms like a petulant kid. Penelope’s heart is racing as she sits, her tongue at least two steps ahead of her brain. She has no idea what she’s supposed to say or do now: only that she refused to let FP defame her character like that and storm out, even as justifiably upset as he was. 

“I understand that your father has done a terrible, horrible thing. And you are very unhappy, and you put on a mask of being unpleasant. But I would never do anything to harm you, and I am not the kind of person to tell someone’s personal secrets. There are a lot of things that I would be afraid of other people knowing. So there. And that -” She folds her hands cautiously on the table, forcing herself to look FP in the eye. “That is all I had to say.” 

FP looks at her for a long time, and then something quirks on one side of his mouth that might actually be a hint of a smile. Then the darkness settles back behind his eyes, a mask of indifference back in place. 

“Can I go now?” he asks. 

Penelope jerks her head neatly. “Yes.” 

FP rises once more, stowing his hands deep in his pockets and briskly heading to the exit. At the doorway he turns around. 

“See you in class,” he says in his normal voice, loud enough to make the librarian glare at them both. 

Then he’s gone, his letterman disappearing around the doorframe as quickly as if he had never existed. Penelope looks down at their notes. Apart from the summary she planned to finish tonight they were done, a good two days ahead of schedule. So long as she kept Ophelia safe - and without FP to toss her around, or to start an argument in the cafeteria line, it should be easy - they’d hopefully be back to textbook work on Monday. 

Still, Penelope feels more uneasy than ever. She can’t help the feeling of grief welling up in her heart. A grief that, for once, has nothing to do with concern for her own future. 

Grief for someone else. 


	7. DAY NINE

Hal lifts the lid off of the pan of onions and smiles in relief. The chopped onion had turned a translucent golden-brown, emanating a delicious smell that reminded him of his family’s kitchen - even sequestered as he was in the dungeons of the Home Ec department. He tips up the saucer of ground beef and lets it fall into the pre-warmed pan, casting a nervous glance over at the index card he had borrowed from his mother’s recipe box. The instructions were laid out simply in Prudence Cooper’s neat cursive hand.  _ Brown the ground beef.  _ Done. 

With zero useful input from Hermione, who seemed to be under the impression they would be ordering takeout every day of their marriage, Hal had elected to choose a meal for extra credit that he could make in his sleep - his mother’s famous hamburger casserole, complete with sauteed green beans and a garden salad on the side. For dessert he was making a three-layer trifle: it looked fancy in a dish, but really all you had to do was scoop a bunch of stuff into a bowl. It was foolproof. 

Now, all Hermione had to do was show up. She was already twenty minutes late to their allotted cooking time, but Hal was learning that when Hermione got somewhere twenty minutes late, in her mind, she was really arriving early. Still, he would have appreciated the extra hand. Then again, he doubted Hermione had any experience in a kitchen beyond preparing oatmeal face masks. 

Hal loved his best friend Hiram dearly, but couldn’t figure out for the life of him what he saw in this girl. Now, Alice Smith - she was a different story. Hal arranges some sliced almonds on top of the green beans and slides them in the oven, secretly picturing Alice doing it with him. If the two of them were ever married, they’d have their own kitchen and matching aprons, working in perfect sync to make their kids dinner at the end of a long day. He’d peel the carrots, she’d slice the onions, he’d drain the beef, she’d roll the biscuit dough… 

He’s lost in his imagination when the door to the Home Ec room flies open with a crash. But the voice that fills the room isn’t Hermione’s nails-on-a-chalkboard tone - instead, it’s flirty and masculine. 

“Honey, I’m home!” Fred declares, prancing into the room with a paper bag of groceries held aloft in his hands. He stops short when he sees Hal at the sink, doing a double-take and looking around himself. “Aw, darn it. Wrong room.” 

Hal laughs, welcoming the interruption. “Hey, Fred. How’s married life?” 

“Well, between you and me, I’d rather be married to Hermione.” Fred turns large baleful eyes on him, drifting closer to sneak a piece of browned ground beef out of the pan with his bare fingers. Hal winces, aware that Fred rarely washed his hands. “You could have traded with me, Hal. If you were really my friend…” 

“Mr. Kandinsky said none of us could trade,” Hal replies, unconcerned. He’d been fielding Fred’s _ if you were really my friend  _ shtick since the third grade. They were still friends. “Sorry. Besides, the project’s almost over.” 

“Tell me, what’s it like having all my dreams come true?” Fred asks, popping one of Hal’s cherry tomatoes into his mouth. “You’re the luckiest guy in the world, you know that?” He wags a stern finger in Hal’s face. “Don’t take it for granted.” 

“I’m going to be the luckiest guy to flunk out of high school if she doesn’t show up,” Hal replies, moving the container of tomatoes surreptitiously out of Fred’s reach. “Speaking of which, Mary’s probably wondering where you are. Don’t you want to-” 

A crash announces the door flying open a second time, and all five-foot-six-inches of a very angry Mary Andrews storms into the room. Fred turns around, beaming, thrilled to be doing his bit a second time. “Hi honey, I’m home! Wait, it didn’t work that time. Go back in our room and I’ll-” 

Mary grabs him by the shirt collar and drags him out of the room, Fred choking loudly all the way. Hal shuts the door firmly behind them. He didn’t need any more interruptions. 

Once they’re gone, Hal turns his attention back to the recipe card. He reaches instinctively for the nearest egg to hand before balking - he’d almost inadvertently smashed Leonardo the second on the side of the pan. 

There had to be somewhere safe to keep him. Hal looks around himself, searching for somewhere where he wouldn’t get lost. What did parents do with their kids when they were cooking? He crosses to the table and sets Leonardo’s bassinet down in a chair. They put them in a booster seat. Perfect. 

Ten minutes later, the door to the home ec room opens a second time. Hal’s bending over to put the casserole in the oven when Hermione waltzes in, dressed in a black-and-white patterned miniskirt, a fluffy black angora sweater, and strappy red high heels. Her hair is piled elaborately on top of her head, and big hoop earrings dangle from her ears. 

“Sorry if I’m late,” Hermione apologizes, discarding her purse in a chair and almost wiping out Leonardo the second. “I didn’t have anything to wear for cooking.” 

“Our allotted cooking time is almost over,” Hal speaks up, wiping his floury hands annoyedly on the apron around his waist. “Mr. Kandinsky is going to come by in ten minutes. I already finished everything.” 

Hermione ignores him, lifting one of the home ec cooking aprons with her forefinger and thumb and looking disgustedly at it. She tosses it onto the counter without a second look and clicks around Hal in her high heels, opening the front door of the oven. “Let me see how you did.” 

“Close that!” Hal speaks up, pushing it shut. “You’re going to mess up the temperature.” 

Hermione glares at him and lifts the lid off of the trifle. “What’s in this?” she asks, eyes narrowing cooly. “Whipped cream? We’re supposed to be making something healthy!” 

“It’s dessert!” Hal protests. “And it’s low-fat whipped cream.” 

“We’re going to get docked marks, you idiot!” Hermione snaps. “We’re supposed to be having a fruit cup or something for dessert! Not this mess!” 

Hal grits his teeth. “I didn’t hear you coming up with any better suggestions.” 

Hermione stomps her way around the countertop and grabs the bucket of shortening. “Why are you cooking with shortening? Do you have any idea how unhealthy this is! Where’d you get your ideas, the 1950’s issue of Housekeeping Weekly?” She picks up the salad bowl and shakes it at him. “What’s in  _ this _ \- lard?” 

“There’s nothing wrong with this recipe!” Hal replies hotly. “And there’s nothing wrong with cooking with lard. It makes good pies.” 

“I’m gaining weight just looking at it,” Hermione retorts. She sets the salad bowl back on the counter. “What am I supposed to do if you’ve cooked everything already?” 

“I don’t know, set the table,” Hal replies testily. Hermione snorts and heads to the cabinets where the home ec classes kept place settings. She places four plates around the table and tosses a stack of napkins into the middle of the table. 

“You’re supposed to fold them,” Hal complains, crossing the room and taking the napkin out of her hands. His mother would have a fit if she’d seen that. He folds it carefully into a clean triangle and tucks it under the rim of the plate. Hermione’s hands go to her hips. 

“I have a better eye for design than you do!” She whisks a napkin out of Hal’s hands and folds it into a three-dimensional swan before his amazed eyes, placing it proudly on the centre of the plate. “There.” Hermione shoots a triumphant glance at her partner. “I can fold things too, you know.” 

“This isn’t a hotel!” Hal grabs the swan by the head, and the careful folds unravel. “Just do it normally. This is supposed to be a normal family dinner.” 

“I’ll do it however I want!” Hermione whisks the napkin out of his grip and starts angrily re-folding it. “And you don’t get docked marks for having a sense of style. In case that’s why you wore  _ those  _ pants to class.” 

Hal’s gaze drops involuntarily to his straight-legged khaki pants. Hermione starts folding a second napkin into a swan, and Hal follows her with a fistful of cutlery, setting out a fork, knife, and spoon at each plate. 

“Stop breathing down my neck!” Hermione declares. “And the dessert spoon is supposed to go across the  _ top _ of the plate!” 

She moves the spoon purposefully to the top of the place setting. Hal moves it back to the side. 

“Well, at my house we put them on the left.”

“They go across the top,” Hermione grits out, grabbing his hand and moving the spoon back. “Now get another fork. We need a dinner fork and a salad fork.” 

“Or we can eat salad and dinner with the same fork. It saves on energy later.” 

Hermione throws her hands in the air. “You should know that there’s a salad fork and a dinner fork. There’s also supposed to be a salad plate and a dinner plate! And the water glasses go above the wine glass, on the  _ right, _ not the left.” 

“We’re not serving wine!” 

“It’s about the  _ presentation, _ ” Hermione corrects him, getting four wine glasses out of the cupboard. “Can’t you do anything right?” 

“Three! We only need three! Leonardo isn’t drinking wine.” 

Hermione’s hands fly to her hips, and she has her mouth open to retort when the timer on the stove goes off. Hal crosses back to the oven to take out the casserole and green beans, and Hermione follows him, looking disdainfully at the dishes as they come out. To Hal’s relief, the biscuit is baked to a perfect, mouth-watering brown. He sighs happily and places it on a cooking tray. 

Hermione huffs and goes back to setting the table while Hal moves each food item to its appropriate serving dish. He carries the green beans to the table and frowns. 

The table looks ridiculous. A napkin swan sits in the middle of each plate, and Hermione’s set out no less than three glasses at each place setting. Cutlery seems to be arranged like a bomb went off - three forks, two spoons, and a knife balanced over a smaller plate off to the side. 

“It’s a bread knife,” Hermione snaps when he tries to move it. 

“But we’re not serving any bread,” Hal protests, already aware that it’s a losing argument. Hermione’s eyes flash with indignation. 

“Why didn’t you buy any bread!” 

“Would you believe the carbs?” Hal snarks back at her. Hermione stamps her foot and looks ready to unleash a tirade on him, when a knock at the door breaks through the silence. 

“Smells good,” Mr. Kandinsky says, entering the home ec room. Hal whirls around guiltily, though he hadn’t been doing anything wrong. 

“Hi, Mr. Kandinsky.” 

“I’m a little early,” Mr. Kandinsky apologizes. He sniffs the air. “It smells ready. But if you still need some time, I can slip back out.” 

“Not at all, Mr. Kandinsky,” Hermione chirps, fluffing her hair and putting on her most seductive smile. She pulls out the chair at the head of the table, ushering their teacher into his seat as though serving dinner were her greatest passion in life. She snatches the casserole dish out of Hal’s hands and flutters around Mr. Kandinsky to arrange each course on the table. “Would you like some water? 

“That’s all right,” Mr. Kandinsky replies, seeming slightly amused. Hal bites his tongue to keep himself from groaning in embarrassment. “I’d just like to know what’s on the menu, and if you followed the nutrition guidelines.” 

Hermione throws a dazzling, expectant smile up at Hal, who wipes his hands again on his apron and recites the meal from memory. 

“We have a hamburger casserole with ground beef and onions, a fresh garden salad, some green beans with slivers of almond, and a  _ low-fat  _ trifle for dessert.” Hermione nods at him, and Hal grabs the salad bowl from behind them. In front of his horrified eyes, Hermione pulls out the chair with their bassinet on it and begins to sit down. 

“Don’t sit there!” Hal cries as Hermione’s lowering herself into her seat. Hermione throws him her most unimpressed glare, breaking her gaze away from their teacher at last. 

“I can sit wherever I want, Hal,” she replies cooly, tossing her hair over her shoulder and sitting down directly onto the basket. 

_ Crack!  _

Hermione’s mouth slowly drops open. Hal’s face turns bright red. Mr. Kandinsky’s eyes widen as he looks at Hermione’s seat. In the deafening silence, the patter of egg yolk dripping to the floor is the only sound. 

“This is a new skirt,” says Hermione quietly. 

“I told you not to sit there,” replies Hal. 

Mr. Kandinsky stands up from the table. “I’m going to see how the other groups are doing,” he says. Hal leaps to his feet. 

“Are you going to come back?” he asks nervously, rubbing his hands on his apron again. “We made a dessert-” 

“No,” says Mr. Kandinsky softly, looking like he regrets the day he’d taken up teaching. “I think I’ve seen all that I need to see.” 

* * *

“Good grief!” Fred yelps as black smoke pours out of the oven. He grabs the hot pan with a dish towel and yanks it out, waving the smoke away from his eyes and coughing. “What did you do to this chicken, incinerate it!?”

“If you weren’t such an idiot, the oven would have been set to the right temperature!” Mary yells back at him. Deep down, though, she knows it’s hopeless. Fred didn’t know how to cook. She didn’t know how to cook. The two of them together were a fiasco. Their chicken was black. Their bread was unsalvageable. Their vegetables were a gluey mess in the trash. And the ambrosia salad that she’d so diligently learned to make in this very classroom was looking a little off. 

Fred dashes around the room opening windows, while Mary fans the air below the smoke alarm furiously with a tea towel. If the sprinklers turned on in the Home Ec room while they were using it, she was pretty sure she could kiss her 4.2 GPA goodbye. 

“You meathead!” she yells at Fred. “You’ve ruined this entire - OUCH!” 

Her hand had just brushed against a hot burner on the stove with nothing on it. Panicking, Mary twists the dial on the stove to off and glances into the pot at the pasta they were supposed to be reheating. Cold as ice. The pot had been sitting on the wrong burner this entire time. 

“FRED!” she screams. 

“What do you want me to do!” Fred, having finished rushing around and opening windows, is dumping the pan that had held their chicken into the sink. Mary rushes to the tap and thrusts her hand under ice-cold water, bumping Fred rudely out of the way with her hip. 

“Cheer up. Let’s go to the mall and pick up some Chinese,” Fred suggests. “And a Mango Julius.” 

“We are not ordering Chinese!” Mary yells at him. “We still have my ambrosia salad, and we still have our dessert. We-” 

She stops, sniffing the air. “What’s burning now?” 

A look of horror crosses Fred’s face. “Our brownies!” 

Mary rushes to the toaster oven and yanks out a pan of brownies, now little more than a charred black lump. “Fred!” she yells. “I told you to take these out when they were done!” 

“You’re the one who didn’t remind me to set a timer!” Fred replies, watching as Mary storms over to the garbage can and tries to scrape the ruined mess out of the bottom of the pan. Mary tightens her grip around the knife and scrapes even more furiously. Fred cautiously approaches her. 

“What can I do?” 

Mary thrusts the knife and pan into his chest. “Fix this!” 

“Fine.” Fred diligently scrapes flecks of charred brownie onto the ruined bread, vegetables, and chicken that already fills the classroom garbage can. A goofy grin crosses his face. “Hey, if Mr. Kandinsky’s into dumpster diving, there’s a whole nutritious meal in here.” 

Mary, hastily scooping canned peaches into a serving dish, glares at him. “Could you stop making stupid jokes for two seconds? He’s going to be here soon.” 

“But stupid jokes are what I do best,” Fred protests. He clears his throat and turns his shirt collar up, furrowing his brow and doing a pitch-perfect impersonation of their health teacher. “Mary, Fred, I’m very disappointed in you. You neglected to make my favourite dumpster-diving dish, rotten egg souffle.” 

Fred turns his collar back down and puts a penitent expression on his face. “Gee, Mr. Kandinsky, I’m so, so sorry, but we couldn’t find any more eggs. Mary broke every single carton that the store had.” 

In spite of the fact that she was ready to murder him, Mary had to admit that he was doing a good impression. He had Kandinsky’s voice and mannerisms just right. “Very funny,” she says cooly. “Now can you please help me figure out how we’re going to get out of this bind without failing?” 

“Class, if you have sex before marriage, your genitals will look like this.” Fred holds up the pan of charred brownies. “And don’t forget the lube.” He grabs a can of cooking spray and sprays it vigorously. “You know what they say. Always grease the pan before you-” 

“Fred!” 

“Hmm, what’s this dish?” Fred asks, planting his hands on his hips and peering into the pot of cold pasta with a perfect imitation of Mr. Kandinsky’s furrowed brow. He turns around and flips his hair, mimicking Mary’s voice. 

“Mr. Kandinsky, I am so anxious to get an A plus plus on this project. I really, really hope you like what I made.” 

Mary grits her teeth. The worst part was that it  _ did _ sound like her. She didn’t know whether to be flattered or angry that Fred knew her mannerisms so well. “Fred, I’m going to kill you-” 

“All of the ingredients are vegan, feminist, and cruelty free,” Fred continues in his nasally Mary-voice. “Since I take Health class so seriously, I worked on a bit of an extra credit project for you. I did edible models of all sexually transmitted diseases. See this raisin pudding? The raisins are the genital warts.” 

“Fred!” Mary yells again, trying not to laugh and failing for the first time. A smile cracks through her stormy demeanour, and she immediately tries to cover it up. “Put it back,” she tries to say in a calm voice. “We need to figure out a new main course.” 

“Genital warts, hmm?” Fred folds his arms and pretends to scratch his facial hair, the way Kandinsky always did when he was thinking hard. “I have personal experience with those. I think-” 

_ “A-hem.”  _

Both Mary and Fred whirl around at once. The real Mr. Kandinsky was standing behind them, his hands on his hips. He didn’t look happy in the slightest. 

Mary could feel her face turning bright red. Fred goes as pale as a ghost, dropping his hands to his sides. Mary looks around herself. The garbage can was full. The oven was open and smoking. The toaster oven was filthy. The countertop was a mess. Ruined food overflowed onto the floor, and puddles of water were everywhere. All they had to show was a sad-looking dish of ambrosia and some canned peaches slopped into a bowl. 

Mr. Kandinsky took two steps into the room, his mouth a thin line. “Mary. Fred. I must say I’m surprised.” There’s no trace of humour in his tone as he observes their embarrassed silence. His gaze lands squarely on Mary. “Surprised, and very disappointed.” 

Mary feels like she’s about to cry. She’s never made a teacher disappointed in her before. It was all Fred’s stupid fault! Couldn’t Kandinsky see that she couldn’t possibly be expected to work with him? She’d been a model student up until now. Her eyes start to water, and she drops her gaze to the messy floor. 

“It’s my fault,” she hears Fred mumble. “I was goofing off. It wasn’t her.” 

“This is a partner assignment!” Kandinsky yells. Mary keeps her eyes glued to the tile. “The point is that you accomplish the given tasks together. If you two don’t start taking this assignment seriously, there’s no way that I can pass you!” 

Fred gulps. Mary stares harder at her shoes, wishing the floor would swallow her up. 

“I’m not convinced that you’re mature enough to handle parenting - in fact, after this, I’m not convinced I’m sure you’re mature enough for high school. This is the kind of behaviour I expect from second-graders.” 

“Yes, sir,” Fred replies dutifully. A muscle is twitching in their teacher’s jaw. 

“Clean up this room. If I don’t see a meal on this table in twenty minutes, you’ll forfeit any extra credit points. Get to work.” Kandinsky turns around and slams the door on his way out. Mary lets out a deep, shaky breath. 

“Hey -” says Fred quickly. “It’s going to be fine. I have an idea.” 

“I think we need a little less of your ideas!” Mary yells at him. Anger is making her face burn as hot as an oven. “You’ve done enough damage! You’ve done nothing but humiliate me during this entire project! And now I’m about to fail this whole class because Kandinsky hates me enough to put me with an absolute  _ bonehead _ who couldn’t be serious about something if his life depended on it!” 

She grabbed a fistful of Fred’s shirt. “Fred Andrews, you make me so mad! You’re ruining my chance at a good education! If I can’t get into a good university, it will be all your fault! You’re ruining this entire project, and you don’t even care! You don’t care about anything! All you do is drive me up the fucking  _ wall! _ It’s like it’s  _ fun  _ for you!” She screws her eyes shut angrily, raising her voice to a scream that could probably be heard all the way through the school. “You think you’re flirting with me and acting cool, but you’re just being a  _ pathetic, miserable little loser who should have FAILED THE NINTH GRADE!-”  _

Mary had more to say, but she never gets to finish her sentence. Because Fred suddenly leans forward and kisses her lightly on the lips. 

Mary’s eyes fly open. Fred’s mouth wasn’t half as gross as she’d imagined it - his kiss had been warm and gentle. She stares at him in shock. Her lips have started to tingle, like she’s possibly having an allergic reaction to her partner’s own stupidity. 

Then Fred begins to smile shyly. Mary wants to punch him. But instead she grabs his collar again and kisses him back. 

Right on his stupid mouth. 


End file.
